react-native-ios-notification-actions

tl;dr

Notification Actions allow the user to interact with the push notification. Those shiny buttons that show up when you swipe a notification to the left on your lock screen, or pull down a notification that appears on the top of the screen? Each one of those buttons is an action.

Notification Categories allow you to group multiple actions together. This Category is what you'll ultimately associate with a push notification.

The basic workflow is:

1. Create and configure some actions.
2. Group them together into a category.
3. (optional) Implement some appdelegate methods to respond to actions.
4. Show a local (or remote) notification, and associate it with the category from (2) to show your actions.

Install

rnpm (preferred)

rnpm install react-native-ios-push-notification-actions

Manual

1. npm install react-native-ios-push-notification-actions
2. Drag ./RNNotificationActions/RNNotificationActions.xcodeproj into your project.
3. Add libRNNotificationActions.a to your Link Binary With Libraries build phase

Getting Started

1. Follow the instructions here to set up push notifications in your app.
2. In AppDelegate.m:

// Import 'RNNotificationActions.h' at top.
#import "RNNotificationActions.h"

// Add support for push notification actions (optional)
- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application handleActionWithIdentifier:(nullable NSString *)identifier forLocalNotification:(nonnull UILocalNotification *)notification withResponseInfo:(nonnull NSDictionary *)responseInfo completionHandler:(nonnull void (^)())completionHandler
{
    NSLog(@"got local notification!");
    [RNNotificationActions application:application handleActionWithIdentifier:identifier forLocalNotification:notification withResponseInfo:responseInfo completionHandler:completionHandler];
}
- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application handleActionWithIdentifier:(NSString *)identifier forRemoteNotification:(NSDictionary *)userInfo withResponseInfo:(NSDictionary *)responseInfo completionHandler:(void (^)())completionHandler
{
  [RNNotificationActions application:application handleActionWithIdentifier:identifier forRemoteNotification:userInfo withResponseInfo:responseInfo completionHandler:completionHandler];
}

Example

import NotificationActions from 'react-native-ios-notification-actions'

// Create an "upvote" action that will display a button when a notification is swiped
let upvoteButton = new NotificationActions.Action({
  activationMode: 'background',
  title: 'Upvote',
  identifier: 'UPVOTE_ACTION'
}, (res, done) => {
  console.info('upvote button pressed with result: ', res);
  done(); //important!
});

// Create a "comment" button that will display a text input when the button is pressed
let commentTextButton = new NotificationActions.Action({
  activationMode: 'background',
  title: 'Reply',
  behavior: 'textInput',
  identifier: 'REPLY_ACTION'
}, (res, done) => {
  console.info('reply typed via notification from source: ', res.source, ' with text: ', res.text);
  done(); //important!
});

// Create a category containing our two actions
let myCategory = new NotificationActions.Category({
  identifier: 'something_happened',
  actions: [upvoteButton, commentTextButton],
  forContext: 'default'
});

// ** important ** update the categories
NotificationActions.updateCategories([myCategory]);

Then, when you present a local notification, you can simply use the same category name:

import {PushNotificationIOS} from 'react-native';

// Lock your screen before 5 seconds elapse!
setTimeout(() => {
    console.info('presenting local notification!');
    PushNotificationIOS.presentLocalNotification({
        alertBody: 'This is a local notification!',
        category: 'something_happened'
    });
}, 5000);

The same goes for remote notifications - just include {category: "your_category_name"} in your push notification payload.

Action options

• title - [String] Title for the action button [apple doc]
• identifier - [String] Identifier for the action.
• onComplete - [function(responseData, completionHandler)] Called when the your app has been activated by the user interacting with this action. responseData contains inputted text if behavior is set to textInput. Important - you must call completionHandler when you are done handling the action.
• behavior - [String] Custom behavior for the action [apple doc]
  • default (default) - No additional behaviors
  • textInput - When tapped, this action opens a text input. On completion, the text is delivered to your onComplete callback.
• activationMode - [String] What should iOS do with this app when this action is pressed? [apple doc]
  • foreground (default) - Bring the app into the foreground
  • background - Launch the app in the background
• authenticationRequired - [Boolean] Should the user be required to unlock the device before the action is performed? [apple doc]
• destructive - [Boolean] If true, displays the action button differently (for example, colored red). [apple doc]

Category options

• identifier - [String] Identifier for the category. When creating a local or remote notification, use this value to associate this category with that notification. [apple doc]
• actions - [Array of Actions] The actions to display with this category. Maximum length depends on the value of the context property. [apple doc]
• context - [String] Controls how many actions to display with a notification. [apple doc]
  • default (default) - Displays up to 4 actions.
  • minimal - Displays up to 2 actions.

TODO / help wanted

• implement action parameters
• PR react-native to allow "category" key in local notification payloads (and maybe other keys as well)

More info

Nice overview of interactive notifications