Ionic 4 & Firebase (FCM) - How to group push notifications - firebase

I'm using Firebase as my backend for my app (Ionic v4). On certain events, I notify the desired clients via Firebase Cloud Messaging. The problem is, it starts to get messy when there are lots of event occurring. I don't want to bombard the clients' devices. Therefore, I was looking for a way to "group" them to a single push notification (just like WhatsApp does).
I've heard about channels but looks like it's supported only on Android O and above. Plus, My device runs Android 7 and looks like WhatsApp can still group their messages, so I believe it's possible to achieve without channels.
I've heard about the tag property too. The problem with this property is that it's overriding the current notification with the same tag, instead of grouping the notifications.
Any solutions?

If you plan to send push notification to the group of topic, add this lines inside the platform ready.
this.fcm.subscribeToTopic('people');

Related

Modify push notifications using capacitor plugin

Is it possible to modify incoming push messages using #capacitor/push-notifications? I‘m sending messages using Firebase Cloud Messaging to my Android and iOS apps, which are encrypted by my backend and should be decrypted by the app. To achieve this, I must modify the messages shown in the notification centers after receiving them.
I didn‘t find any documentation on this, so I would appreciate any hint into achieving this. If this is not supported, is there any other solution I could use?
You can send a data notification (which is not automatically displayed by Android) and then use #capacitor/local-notifications to show the modified notification.

Firebase custom notifications with FlutterFire

Thanks to Firebase and FlutterFire, it's easy to send regular notifications from the servers to the users' devices. Those notifications include a title, a body, and an image url. But what about creating a no-that-simple notification, like Telegram's or WhatsApp's?
The simple question is to avoid sending a Notification from the server, and instead set the data field to the push message. But according to the FlutterFire documentation:
Data only messages are considered low priority by devices when your application is in the background or terminated, and will be ignored
So, it sounds like if we want to have a reliable delivery system, we should add a Notification to our push messages. But that notification is so simple. And, again, according to the documentation:
If your message is a notification one (includes a notification property), the Firebase SDKs will intercept this and display a visible notification to your users (assuming you have requested permission & the user has notifications enabled)
So: If I want a reliable system, I have to send Notifications, but I do it, I can't tell FlutterFire to use my custom notifications.
So the question is: how to show custom notifications with FlutterFire?
What I want to achieve is something like this:
I'm going to try setting the priority of the push notification.
You can however explicitly increase the priority by sending additional properties on the FCM payload:
On Android, set the priority field to high.
On Apple (iOS & macOS), set the content-available field to true.
On the server side code, it looks like:
message.setAndroidConfig(AndroidConfig.builder().setPriority(AndroidConfig.Priority.HIGH).build());
message.setApnsConfig(ApnsConfig.builder().setAps(Aps.builder().setContentAvailable(true).build()).build());

Firebase web push notifications

Hey guys I am using firebase push notifications in the web application, I am showing the notification via the service worker as mentioned in the firebase documentation.
the problem is when I open the browser , I see multiple push notifications stacked upon one another , as its very annoying to see many push notifications , is there any way to combine push notifications into one, based on some attribute.
As far as I know, you cannot group them. That is why many users tend to turn off notifications in their mobile devices because it is annoying. You have to follow the basic principles of push notifications.
It must be timely
It must be relevant to the users

Notification when app is closed in Ionic3

I am building my app using Ionic3 and Firebase. Here users can send eatch other messages. I want when a use sends a message to another ures he/she should get a notification in the phone even when the app is closed. I have no idea how to achieve this with Ionic3.
Any suggesions please.
I can see there are mainly 2 plugins for push notifications. cordova-plugin-firebase and cordova-plugin-fcm
At least I can fine some tutorial for cordova-plugin-fcm in the internet. There is no clear example of any wayout given for cordova-plugin-firebase.
You have to use the cordova-plugin-firebase and each time a user logs in using a device, a unique device ID will be registered with respect to that device. This device ID is used to send notifications. Make sure to handle this (device ID), every time a user logs in & logs out. If you do not remove the device_id from the database when a user logs out, he will continue to receive notifications.
You have to use a cordova-plugin for sending push notifications. One of the many available plugins is: cordova-plugin-firebase. This one is a good fit for Ionic 3 because there is an ionic-native wrapper available.
For sending the push notification you can use a third party service (there is also one offered by ionic) or you can send them yourself from your backend.

Does Ionic 2 support private & public Firebase notifications?

I'm thinking to work on firebase notifications in the last few days but I want to some answers for this few questions:
Does Ionic2 support firebase notifications ?
Will notification show in the top of screen when my application closed or it should be work in the background ?
Is firebase notification sent on time or it may take long time ?
If I assumed Ionic 2 can send private notifications (to my device only), so can I send public notification for all application users ?
If the answer of all questions "yes", wish you give me any useful links that may help me (if you have a time)
In addition to Gabriel's answer:
The default behavior for notifications is for it to show on the top part of the screen. I haven't worked on Ionic before, but AFAIK, the behavior should compared to Android.
With that said, you should refer to the Handling Messages part of the FCM docs.
There are factors to consider that may affect the time it takes for the device to receive a message, but as FCM's behavior, it would try it's best to send the message, as soon as feasible (see my answer here).
Gonna itemize this further:
Specific device only - Yup. When sending the message, just specify the registration token(s) that should recieve that message.
All devices - Yup. You could use the Firebase Notifications Console. But if you intend to send the message by using the REST API, you have to make sure that the devices are subscribed accordingly to your custom global topic.
About the device-to-device Gabriel mentioned, I think it should be worded as server to specific device(s).
Yes it does, and it works fine with FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging, aka GCM - Google Cloud Messaging). It supports subscribing to topics and device-to-device notification via HTTP client. The topics subscriptions and device-to-device both require FCM plugin.
Yes, they'll appear on top of your device screen as any push notification, you'll just need to code how it'll behave after receiving it, like execute something if the notification is tapped, or do something if it's received and the app is already open (foreground), it's all up to you.
It's sent on time, i've never had delay problems, the longer it took to send the notification and i receive in my device was 10 seconds. But as far as i know it "stores" your notification for 24 hours, so if the servers go down or something happen the notification has a life time of 24 hours to be sent.
You can, as said in first answer, subscribe your users to topics. Let's say you want a topic to sent message so all users can receive, you can have an all topic, or have one only for logged users, one only for users who bought products, you can even get all users tokens and send one by one, but it's much better having them subscribe to topics.
Topics notifications can be sent via the Firebase project console. Device-to-device is sent by your app code.
To send device-to-device you'll need a token, it's provided by the FCM plugin (link above) and you'll need to store this token somewhere, like in your user node on Firebase. I usualy use the user device ID provided by the Device plugin to have his token, since the user can have multiple devices and log in all then, this'll prevent token overriding.
I don't know good tutorials about configuring FCM with Firebase, if i find something i'll edit the question and add it for you, but stick to the ionic native link and the FCM plugin github page.
Hope this helps.

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