I'm planning to add push notifications to my web app.
As far as I understand it, to push notifications to my users, I can either use a web push library and deliver the notifications directly, or use a push notification service such as OneSignal, Firebase Cloud Messaging, or Batch.com.
From what I understand, these services offer a one-stop solution to deliver notifications not only as Web Push, but also to iOS and Android apps.
If I'm focusing only on Web Push for now, is there any advantage I should be aware of, to use one of these services over a web push library directly?
Web Push is a standard which is still under development and subject to change. Also browser support is quite limited at the moment (see https://caniuse.com/#feat=push-api).
The advantage is: you have one API to rule all the supporting platforms (including desktop).
Disadvantage is: You have to be aware that not all platforms support the standard.
Using a notification SaaS solution to handle notifications enables you to handle all platforms. Sending out a notification from your backend will be a single call to your notification SaaS service, but you still have to be aware, when you want to have native notifications on Android, iOS and the browser, you will have to handle the integration of those platforms differently in your client apps (see example here using Google Cloud Message integration in an Android App: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/android/client).
So your decision should be based on which platforms you have to support.
- If you get away with supporting Chrome, Firefox and Edge browsers on non-iOS-Devices (or handle iOS Notifications differently), you can use Web Push.
- Otherwise i would choose a Notification SaaS Solution.
The most important point for me personally when doing your own implementation is that you control everything. This means that your notifications don't fail when AWS loses a region or pricing changes and you can't afford it any more. Not any provider can ban you because of the content you distribute or the complaints from users. You can implement your own logic for showing the notifications on the front-end, like stacking them or having your own segmentation rules (paying users versus free tier, for instance). I'm not even speaking of the custom subscription UI. No weird copyright in your messages.
From what I understand, these services offer a one-stop solution to deliver notifications not only as Web Push, but also to iOS and Android apps.
When you've got the server logic to process the app events and send notifications in place, it shouldn't be really hard to extent it do work with mobile push notifications. The only thing that changes is the way you subscribe devices.
And the last, but not the least - it's fun to develop. This is more of a personal matter, I guess, but I like learning new thing :)
Hope that helps you to make a decision.
you can implement push notification to your website without using third-party libraries. You have required to get subscription token from the client and store this subscription token onto the server (Inside database). After when you want to send a push notification to the user then you have to just call endpoint (endpoint is mentioned in subscription token). That's it.
Due to security risk and managing subscription tokens, developers prefer to use firebase, AWS push notification or onesignal.com services. These services are optional you don't need at all.
Read links introduction to push notification and also the same lab code examples. Later I will update with simple working code for further reference to your question.
It depends on what you want. It‘s not possible to use iOS Safari for Web-Push. For notifications to iOS you have to use a service or build your own app.
I use Pushover for notifying myself from Scripts and Software. That may or may not be a solution depending on how much users you have, how many notifications you send and how willing your users are to use a web app like Pushover (or an app on iOS).
A service will keep notifications going when things change. So it should be less maintenance for you.
If you want to target iOS visitors also, this is not possible, as web push notifications are not supported by iOS.
To circumvent this, you need to use a third party service like Wise Notifications.
The alternative is to build an iOS app and send native push notifications.
I have a project that currently sends PNs through APNS and I'm investigating using Firebase for this purpose. I would prefer that the push notifications be sent through APNS and Firebase merely acts as a wrapper/intermediate around APNS. I'm not using any other feature of Firebase(storage, persistent connections, messaging, etc) either.
All guides/examples on this topic seem to integrate the Firebase SDK and relevant config files but I don't see the need for any client side change if the notifications are going to go through APNS.
Do I really need the Firebase SDK for simply sending PNs? If yes, for what reason?
You only need the Firebase SDK if you intend to use the service.
The behavior of FCM, as you know it, is that when you send a message with FCM, it forwards the message towards APNs, which in turn would send it to the iOS device.
If you're already fine using APNs alone for the push notifications, then you technically don't need the Firebase SDK.
I want to implement a push notification service. The idea is to use the GCM Service. Is it possible to read the notifications both via web app (the app is written in php using laravel) and via mobile app for the authenticated users using the same technology?
I think it is possible, I also see this tutorial that can help you to achieve that. It also use PHP as a sample, so it seems like your work will be easier:)
It explains here the basic steps that you need to achieve push notification. It has a sample code and a screenshot to make you understand more the content of this tutorial.
In developing this application, it involves two parts, a GCM Server Application that create Web application using Php to send message to User via GCM Cloud server and GCM Client Application that create Android application which receive messages sent from GCM Server Web App.
For more information you can also check this links:
Implementing Push Messaging for Chrome
How to send push notification to web browser?
I am building mobile apps for iOS and Android using PhoneGap Build. I would like to send push notifications to both types of device using the same server-side process. Is this possible?
Apple's certification process to enable push notifications is painful, much more so than anything available for Android. Do I have to use it?
GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) says it supports both operating systems, but the more I read about it - with respect to Phonegap - the less I see iOS mentioned! And sadly the GCM/Phonegap plugin doesn't support subscribing to a topic, which is a way of sending one message out to all devices in one go via a 'global' topic.
UrbanAirship and PushWhoosh seem to integrate with Phonegap, but I am forced to use their website to create my messages. GCM looks more attractive in this respect, because I can get our own ASP.NET server to talk to GCM via HTTP and thus control messages from our databases.
Main question: Are there any options for a single server-side option which can send push notifications to both iOS and Android via a single Phonegap plugin? (Ideally I would control messages from my own server, where one message can go to all Android/iOS devices in one go, and avoid as many Apple certificates as possible.~)
the thing is that we already have a backend that handles all the push notification process. From device registration on our DB and notification handling on the device and notification sending to Apple and Google servers...Looking into Parse I saw that it has a lot of things that will take us a lot of time to develop but mostly on the process that sends the notification to the devices.
So...I need to know if devices can register in our backend, then from our backend to Parse and then send push trough Parse. Is this possible? Image below.
Thanks!!
Yes this is possible. You'll need setup your push certificates with Parse and register each device's push token with a Parse Installation object's deviceToken field for it to work. All this is documented on their web site. You'll need to setup a Parse User object for each user as well as each Installation is associated with a single User.