I am considering switching from pushwoosh to gamethrive / onesignal but am a little confused. I am using the Unity SDK and cant see anywhere in the documentation that I am able to sund push from one unit to a specific othe unit. Can anyone help me clarify if this is possible
Thanks in advance
Yes this is possible.
The OneSignal API supports delivering notifications to individual users or groups of users in several ways. In your case, the best way is probably through the device's OneSignal ID (through the include_player_ids field in the OneSignal API).
You can send notifications from one device to another by interacting through the OneSignal API either on your own backend server or from the code running in your app. However, in either case, you will need to have a backend server to store a list of the OneSignal ID for each one of your users.
Here's a rough outline of the process:
Part A (First getting the OneSignal ID):
A device runs your application for the first time
You initialize OneSignal in your application and you receive a new unique OneSignal ID for this new device in a callback
You then must store this OneSignal ID on your own backend server somewhere.
Part B (Delivering a message):
You wish to send a message to a specific user
You ask your backend server for the OneSignal ID of the user who you wish to send a message to.
You use the OneSignal API to send a message to the user.
Related links:
OneSignal Homepage
OneSignal Documentation Home
OneSignal Notification Delivery API Documentation
Related
In Urban Airship, when I am composing a notification, I can target specific users by searching for a Urban Airship channel_id (device ID):
I sent from Urban Airship the push notification that I am showing above, and I received it successfully. Now I want to do the same thing, send a push notification to a specific device, but now using the Firebase console. The problem is that in Firebase, in the step where I need to specify the target, it only allows me to choose User segment or topic. I was expecting to see a third option: Target specific users (for sending notifications to one or many specific GCM/FCM device token IDs. So my alternative is to add a GCM/FCM device token ID to a topic and then send the push notification to that topic, which is something that I have successfully done before. Nonetheless, that would be a workaround and not the way I would prefer to do this. Is it possible to send push notifications to specific users (by defining the target GCM/FCM device token IDs) from the Firebase console? Thank you.
UPDATE 1: See how the Firebase console (https://console.firebase.google.com/) only shows User segment and Topic as the Target:
First Step:
Second Step:
Third Step:
By design, the notification feature in the console is for sending out broadcast-type events. Sending user-specific alerts would be more of a programmatic operation done through the API.
For sending test messages, there is a console tool for this, explained here.
Note that it is possible to send a notification to one device by subscribing a device to any topic and sending the notification to that topic in the console (keep in mind topics are public and you can't prevent users from signing up to them; fine for testing most likely).
Another alternative is to send a message via HTTP or curl. Perhaps the best resource for this is the quickstart/messaging example.
Yesterday Google has announced a new set of tools for Firebase, one of them was Notifications the ability to send notifications from server to devices which are using my app.
But can we now notify users when they receive a new message?
And if not, is there a way around to achieve this?
Looking at the documentation, this doesn't seem currently possible automatically. Here is a possible way to accomplish it "manually" with another server:
Subscribe a user to it's own user ID
In android
FirebaseMessaging.getInstance().subscribeToTopic("InsertUserIDHere");
In IOS
[[FIRMessaging messaging] subscribeToTopic:#"/topics/InsertUserIDHere"];
Setup an outside server that checks every sent messages. When a message is sent, the server should create a notification that includes the recipient's user ID as the topic.
Look here for more info.
You can send messages to group of users (targeting a specific "topic") or to a single device (targeting a Firebase Cloud Messaging token).
To subscribe a device to a topic use:
FirebaseMessaging.getInstance().subscribeToTopic("topicName");
To obtain the device token use (*1) :
FirebaseInstanceId.getInstance().getToken();
Then you can use the Firebase Notificaitons web console, or the FCM server API if you want to send messages from your server.
See: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/downstream#sending_topic_messages_from_the_server
Notes:
[1] getToken() can return null if the token is not yet available.
You can use the callback onTokenRefresh() to be notified when the token is available and when the token is rotated.
See: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/android/client#sample-register
I know that Firebase has recently added support for Push Notifications and while this is a great thing, I only seem to be able to send push notifications manually via the Notifications Panel.
What I'd like to do is to send push notifications within a user scope...Let me explain that. Each User in my App has an account and then each user can join a group. Within this group the user can perform tasks and has a list of chores to do. Now when certain tasks are due for example I want to remind the user of doing it with a push notification. For 1-10 I might be able to pull this off manually, but is there a way to dynamically based on the data in the Database send out Push Notifications?
I know that certain Push Notifications can be created using the Analytics tool such as "Hey you have not visited for 3 days, please come back whatever"... but I'd like to register push notifications such as "I just created a task, this task needs to be done within 3 days. Remind me in 3 days if the task is still not done".
Is this possible with Firebase or do I need to have my own server connecting to Firebase and handling those events?
-xCoder
You need to implement FCM in your client and in a server. Let me put this straight:
First, you need that your client, or app, to register into FCM and get a FCM token that will be used to identify that device uniquely.
Then, store that token wherever you like. It can be into firebase database or other server you may like. I recommend you to store it into firebase if you are using it as a database for your users; that's my case.
Also, you need to implement a http or xmpp server in order to send FCM messages to your registered devices containing the data you are interested in. For example, you can implement a Google App Engine endpoint (can be done with Android Studio and Java) that is quite simple or a NodeJS module, depending on your preferred language.
If you are using Firebase as database you can connect from your server with the appropriate SDK and get the FCM tokens you want from your users, and then send the message to those with data. Don't forget to secure your serve.
The way you implement your server algorithm to send FCM messages depends on your app purposes.
Hope it is clear enough for you. Also you can find all the documentation with a short video that explains the general structure here: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging
You can use cloud functions to trigger on any create, update or delete operation in your database and in the trigger event, you can choose to send in FCM push notifications to the devices of your choice.
Here is the documentation regarding the use and structure of a cloud function: https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/extend-with-functions
Hope this helps!
I am running into a small issue in my unity app after adding the OneSignal plugin. I can receive push notifications if I send them from the web server and everything is fast. However, my concern is that OneSignal assigns one ID to the device not to the user.
My question is: there is any way to create an ID after my login?
The only problem in the actual state is if the user has multiple accounts or if a friend connects from that device. Both users would have the same ID and therefore both would receive the same notifications.
Thanks.
I would recommend using OneSignal.SendTag in your app to tag the user with your userId when they login. Then when they logout call OneSiganl.DeleteTag to remove it.
This will allow you to send a notification with the tags field on the OneSignal create notification REST API POST call.
I have developed an android application with the Parse push notification service and I can send notification from the Parse website.
How can I send push notifications through my own website using ASP.net? Is there any way?
I checked the Parse documentation but i get confused, I would really appreciate it if someone would help me.
Thanks
I ran into similar confusion. I wasn't even sure how to properly setup the user so that I could send a push notification directly to them. Then I found the following post:
Channels and Targeted Push Notifications
Note the last item under the Channels heading:
Most apps might find it useful to have a channel for each user so that
they can send messages to a user across all their devices and have
users follow others in the app.
So, now I know that I should subscribe each user to a channel that uniquely identifies the user (e.g., the 'bobsmith#foo.org' channel).
After I have subscribed the user to their channel, I can call Parse's REST API via my ASP.NET application. See Sending Pushes in the Parse REST API Developers Guide.
For an ASP.NET/C# example of how to submit a push notification check out this answer.