Node Push Notifications

A node.js module for interfacing with Apple Push Notification, Google Cloud Messaging, Windows Push Notification, Web-Push Notification and Amazon Device Messaging services.

• Installation
• Requirements
• Features
• Usage
• GCM
• APN
• WNS
• ADM
• Web-Push
• Resources
• LICENSE

Installation

npm install node-pushnotifications --save

Requirements

Node version >= 12.x.x

Features

• Powerful and intuitive.
• Multi platform push notifications.
• Automatically detects destination device type.
• Unified error handling.
• Written in ES6, compatible with ES5 through babel transpilation.

Usage

1. Import and setup push module

Include the settings for each device type. You should only include the settings for the devices that you expect to have. I.e. if your app is only available for android or for ios, you should only include gcm or apn respectively.

import PushNotifications from 'node-pushnotifications';

const settings = {
    gcm: {
        id: 'your-GCM-id',
        phonegap: false, // phonegap compatibility mode, see below (defaults to false)
        ...
    },
    apn: {
        token: {
            key: './certs/key.p8', // optionally: fs.readFileSync('./certs/key.p8')
            keyId: 'ABCD',
            teamId: 'EFGH',
        },
        production: false // true for APN production environment, false for APN sandbox environment,
        ...
    },
    adm: {
        client_id: null,
        client_secret: null,
        ...
    },
    wns: {
        client_id: null,
        client_secret: null,
        notificationMethod: 'sendTileSquareBlock',
        ...
    },
    web: {
        vapidDetails: {
            subject: '< \'mailto\' Address or URL >',
            publicKey: '< URL Safe Base64 Encoded Public Key >',
            privateKey: '< URL Safe Base64 Encoded Private Key >',
        },
        gcmAPIKey: 'gcmkey',
        TTL: 2419200,
        contentEncoding: 'aes128gcm',
        headers: {}
    },
    isAlwaysUseFCM: false, // true all messages will be sent through node-gcm (which actually uses FCM)
};
const push = new PushNotifications(settings);

• GCM options: see node-gcm
• APN options: see node-apn
• ADM options: see node-adm
• WNS options: see wns
• Web-push options: see web-push

• isAlwaysUseFCM: use node-gcm to send notifications to GCM (by default), iOS, ADM and WNS.

iOS: It is recommended to use provider authentication tokens. You need the .p8 certificate that you can obtain in your account membership. You should ask for an Apple Push Notification Authentication Key (Sandbox & Production) or Apple Push Notification service SSL (Sandbox & Production). However, you can also use certificates. See node-apn to see how to prepare cert.pem and key.pem.

2. Define destination device ID

Registration id's should be defined as objects (or strings which is not recommended and should be used at your own risk, it is kept for backwards compatibility).

You can send to multiple devices, independently of platform, creating an array with different destination device IDs.

// Single destination
const registrationIds = 'INSERT_YOUR_DEVICE_ID';

// Multiple destinations
const registrationIds = [];
registrationIds.push('INSERT_YOUR_DEVICE_ID');
registrationIds.push('INSERT_OTHER_DEVICE_ID');

The PN.send() method later detects device type and therefore used push method, based on the id stucture. Check out the method PN.getPushMethodByRegId how this detection works.

Actually there are several different supported reg id's:

Object regId

It can be of 2 types:

• Mobile regId:

{
  "id": "INSERT_YOUR_DEVICE_ID",
  "type": "apn"
}

Where type can be one of: 'apn', 'gcm', 'adm', 'wns', 'webPush'. The types are available as constants:

import { WEB, WNS, ADM, GCM, APN } from 'node-pushnotifications';

const regId = {
  id: 'INSERT_YOUR_DEVICE_ID',
  type: APN,
};

In case of webPush, id needs to be as defined below for Web subscription.

• Web subscription see web-push

{
  "endpoint": "< Push Subscription URL >",
  "keys": {
    "p256dh": "< User Public Encryption Key >",
    "auth": "< User Auth Secret >"
  }
}

String regId (not recommended)

It is not recommended, as Apple stays that the reg id is of variable length, which makes difficult to identify if it is a APN regId or GCM regId.

• regId.substring(0, 4) === 'http': 'wns'
• /^(amzn[0-9]*.adm)/i.test(regId): 'adm'
• (regId.length === 64 || regId.length === 160) && /^[a-fA-F0-9]+$/.test(regId): 'apn'
• regId.length > 64: 'gcm'
• otherwise: 'unknown' (the notification will not be sent)

Android:

• If you provide more than 1.000 registration tokens, they will automatically be splitted in 1.000 chunks (see this issue in gcm repo)
• You are able to send to device groups or other custom recipients instead of using a list of device tokens (see node-gcm docs). Documentation can be found in the GCM section..

Example:

const data = { ...data, recipients };

3. Send the notification

Create a JSON object with a title and message and send the notification.

const data = {
    title: 'New push notification', // REQUIRED for Android
    topic: 'topic', // REQUIRED for iOS (apn and gcm)
    /* The topic of the notification. When using token-based authentication, specify the bundle ID of the app.
     * When using certificate-based authentication, the topic is usually your app's bundle ID.
     * More details can be found under https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/setting_up_a_remote_notification_server/sending_notification_requests_to_apns
     */
    body: 'Powered by AppFeel',
    custom: {
        sender: 'AppFeel',
    },
    priority: 'high', // gcm, apn. Supported values are 'high' or 'normal' (gcm). Will be translated to 10 and 5 for apn. Defaults to 'high'
    collapseKey: '', // gcm for android, used as collapseId in apn
    contentAvailable: true, // gcm, apn. node-apn will translate true to 1 as required by apn.
    delayWhileIdle: true, // gcm for android
    restrictedPackageName: '', // gcm for android
    dryRun: false, // gcm for android
    icon: '', // gcm for android
    image: '', // gcm for android
    style: '', // gcm for android
    picture: '', // gcm for android
    tag: '', // gcm for android
    color: '', // gcm for android
    clickAction: '', // gcm for android. In ios, category will be used if not supplied
    locKey: '', // gcm, apn
    titleLocKey: '', // gcm, apn
    locArgs: undefined, // gcm, apn. Expected format: Stringified Array
    titleLocArgs: undefined, // gcm, apn. Expected format: Stringified Array
    retries: 1, // gcm, apn
    encoding: '', // apn
    badge: 2, // gcm for ios, apn
    sound: 'ping.aiff', // gcm, apn
    android_channel_id: '', // gcm - Android Channel ID
    notificationCount: 0, // fcm for android. badge can be used for both fcm and apn
    alert: { // apn, will take precedence over title and body
        title: 'title',
        body: 'body'
        // details: https://github.com/node-apn/node-apn/blob/master/doc/notification.markdown#convenience-setters
    },
    silent: false, // gcm, apn, will override badge, sound, alert and priority if set to true on iOS, will omit `notification` property and send as data-only on Android/GCM
    /*
     * A string is also accepted as a payload for alert
     * Your notification won't appear on ios if alert is empty object
     * If alert is an empty string the regular 'title' and 'body' will show in Notification
     */
    // alert: '',
    launchImage: '', // apn and gcm for ios
    action: '', // apn and gcm for ios
    category: '', // apn and gcm for ios
    // mdm: '', // apn and gcm for ios. Use this to send Mobile Device Management commands.
    // https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Miscellaneous/Reference/MobileDeviceManagementProtocolRef/3-MDM_Protocol/MDM_Protocol.html
    urlArgs: '', // apn and gcm for ios
    truncateAtWordEnd: true, // apn and gcm for ios
    mutableContent: 0, // apn
    threadId: '', // apn
    pushType: undefined, // apn. valid values are 'alert' and 'background' (https://github.com/parse-community/node-apn/blob/master/doc/notification.markdown#notificationpushtype)
    expiry: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) + 28 * 86400, // unit is seconds. if both expiry and timeToLive are given, expiry will take precedence
    timeToLive: 28 * 86400,
    headers: [], // wns
    launch: '', // wns
    duration: '', // wns
    consolidationKey: 'my notification', // ADM
};

// You can use it in node callback style
push.send(registrationIds, data, (err, result) => {
    if (err) {
        console.log(err);
    } else {
	    console.log(result);
    }
});

// Or you could use it as a promise:
push.send(registrationIds, data)
    .then((results) => { ... })
    .catch((err) => { ... });

• err will be null if all went fine, otherwise will return the error from the respective provider module.
• result will contain an array with the following objects (one object for each device type found in device registration id's):

[
    {
        method: 'gcm', // The method used send notifications and which this info is related to
        multicastId: [], // (only Android) Array with unique ID (number) identifying the multicast message, one identifier for each chunk of 1.000 notifications)
        success: 0, // Number of notifications that have been successfully sent. It does not mean that the notification has been deliveried.
        failure: 0, // Number of notifications that have been failed to be send.
        message: [{
            messageId: '', // (only for android) String specifying a unique ID for each successfully processed message or undefined if error
            regId: value, // The current registrationId (device token id). Beware: For Android this may change if Google invalidates the previous device token. Use "originalRegId" if you are interested in when this changed occurs.
            originalRegId: value, // (only for android) The registrationId that was sent to the push.send() method. Compare this with field "regId" in order to know when the original registrationId (device token id) gets changed.
            error: new Error('unknown'), // If any, there will be an Error object here for depuration purposes (when possible it will come form source libraries aka apn, node-gcm)
            errorMsg: 'some error', // If any, will include the error message from the respective provider module
        }],
    },
    {
        method: 'apn',
        ... // Same structure here, except for message.orignalRegId
    },
    {
        method: 'wns',
        ... // Same structure here, except for message.orignalRegId
    },
    {
        method: 'adm',
        ... // Same structure here, except for message.orignalRegId
    },
    {
        method: 'webPush',
        ... // Same structure here, except for message.orignalRegId
    },
]

GCM

NOTE: If you provide more than 1.000 registration tokens, they will automatically be splitted in 1.000 chunks (see this issue in gcm repo)

The following parameters are used to create a GCM message. See https://developers.google.com/cloud-messaging/http-server-ref#table5 for more info:

    // Set default custom data from data
    let custom;
    if (typeof data.custom === 'string') {
        custom = {
            message: data.custom,
        };
    } else if (typeof data.custom === 'object') {
        custom = Object.assign({}, data.custom);
    } else {
        custom = {
            data: data.custom,
        };
    }

    custom.title = custom.title || data.title;
    custom.message = custom.message || data.body;
    custom.sound = custom.sound || data.sound;
    custom.icon = custom.icon || data.icon;
    custom.msgcnt = custom.msgcnt || data.badge;
    if (opts.phonegap === true && data.contentAvailable) {
        custom['content-available'] = 1;
    }

    const message = new gcm.Message({ // See https://developers.google.com/cloud-messaging/http-server-ref#table5
        collapseKey: data.collapseKey,
        priority: data.priority === 'normal' ? data.priority : 'high',
        contentAvailable: data.contentAvailable || false,
        delayWhileIdle: data.delayWhileIdle || false, // Deprecated from Nov 15th 2016 (will be ignored)
        timeToLive: data.expiry - Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) || data.timeToLive || 28 * 86400,
        restrictedPackageName: data.restrictedPackageName,
        dryRun: data.dryRun || false,
        data: data.custom,
        notification: {
            title: data.title, // Android, iOS (Watch)
            body: data.body, // Android, iOS
            icon: data.icon, // Android
            image: data.image, // Android
            style: data.style, // Android
            picture: data.picture, // Android
            sound: data.sound, // Android, iOS
            badge: data.badge, // iOS
            tag: data.tag, // Android
            color: data.color, // Android
            click_action: data.clickAction || data.category, // Android, iOS
            body_loc_key: data.locKey, // Android, iOS
            body_loc_args: data.locArgs, // Android, iOS
            title_loc_key: data.titleLocKey, // Android, iOS
            title_loc_args: data.titleLocArgs, // Android, iOS
	        android_channel_id: data.android_channel_id, // Android
        },
    }

data is the parameter in push.send(registrationIds, data)

• See node-gcm fields

Note: parameters are duplicated in data and in notification, so in fact they are being send as:

    data: {
        title: 'title',
        message: 'body',
        sound: 'mySound.aiff',
        icon: undefined,
        msgcnt: undefined
        // Any custom data
        sender: 'appfeel-test',
    },
    notification: {
        title: 'title',
        body: 'body',
        icon: undefined,
	image: undefined,
	style: undefined,
	picture: undefined,
        sound: 'mySound.aiff',
        badge: undefined,
        tag: undefined,
        color: undefined,
        click_action: undefined,
        body_loc_key: undefined,
        body_loc_args: undefined,
        title_loc_key: undefined,
        title_loc_args: undefined,
	android_channel_id: undefined
    }

In that way, they can be accessed in android in the following two ways:

    String title = extras.getString("title");
    title = title != null ? title : extras.getString("gcm.notification.title");

Silent push notifications

GCM supports silent push notifications which are not displayed to the user but only used to transmit data.

const silentPushData = {
    topic: 'yourTopic',
    silent: true,
    custom: {
        yourKey: 'yourValue',
        ...
    }
}

Internally, silent: true will tell node-gcm not to send the notification property and only send the custom property. If you don't specify silent: true then the push notifications will still be visible on the device. Note that this is nearly the same behavior as phoneGap: true and will set content-available to true.

Send to custom recipients (device groups or topics)

In order to override the default behaviour of sending the notifications to a list of device tokens, you can pass a recipients field with your desired recipients. Supported fields are to and condition as documented in the node-gcm docs.

Example:

const dataWithRecipientTo = { ...yourData, recipients: { to: 'topicName' } };
const dataWithRecipientCondition = { ...yourData, recipients: { condition: 'topicName' } };

push.send(registrationIds, dataWithRecipientTo)
    .then((results) => { ... })
    .catch((err) => { ... });

Be aware that the presence of a valid data.recipient field will take precendence over any Android device tokens passed with the registrationIds.

PhoneGap compatibility mode

In case your app is written with Cordova / Ionic and you are using the PhoneGap PushPlugin, you can use the phonegap setting in order to adapt to the recommended behaviour described in https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugin-push/blob/master/docs/PAYLOAD.md#android-behaviour.

const settings = {
  gcm: {
    id: '<yourId>',
    phonegap: true,
  },
};

APN

The following parameters are used to create an APN message:

{
    retryLimit: data.retries || -1,
    expiry: data.expiry || ((data.timeToLive || 28 * 86400) + Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000)),
    priority: data.priority === 'normal' ? 5 : 10,
    encoding: data.encoding,
    payload: data.custom || {},
    badge: data.silent === true ? undefined : data.badge,
    badge: data.sound === true ? undefined : data.sound,
    alert: data.sound === true ? undefined : data.alert || {
        title: data.title,
        body: data.body,
        'title-loc-key': data.titleLocKey,
        'title-loc-args': data.titleLocArgs,
        'loc-key': data.locKey,
        'loc-args': data.locArgs,
        'launch-image': data.launchImage,
        action: data.action,
    },
    topic: data.topic, // Required
    category: data.category || data.clickAction,
    contentAvailable: data.contentAvailable,
    mdm: data.mdm,
    urlArgs: data.urlArgs,
    truncateAtWordEnd: data.truncateAtWordEnd,
    collapseId: data.collapseKey,
    mutableContent: data.mutableContent || 0,
    threadId: data.threadId,
    pushType: data.pushType
}

data is the parameter in push.send(registrationIds, data)

• See node-apn fields
• Please note that topic is required (see node-apn docs). When using token-based authentication, specify the bundle ID of the app. When using certificate-based authentication, the topic is usually your app's bundle ID. More details can be found under https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/setting_up_a_remote_notification_server/sending_notification_requests_to_apns

Silent push notifications

iOS supports silent push notifications which are not displayed to the user but only used to transmit data.

Silent push notifications must not include sound, badge or alert and have normal priority.

By setting the silent property to true the values for sound, badge and alert will be overridden to undefined.

Priority will be overridden to normal.

const silentPushData = {
    topic: 'yourTopic',
    contentAvailable: true,
    silent: true,
    custom: {
        yourKey: 'yourValue',
        ...
    }
}

WNS

The following fields are used to create a WNS message:

const notificationMethod = settings.wns.notificationMethod;
const opts = Object.assign({}, settings.wns);
opts.headers = data.headers || opts.headers;
opts.launch = data.launch || opts.launch;
opts.duration = data.duration || opts.duration;

delete opts.notificationMethod;
delete data.headers;
delete data.launch;
delete data.duration;

wns[notificationMethod](regId, data, opts, (err, response) => { ... });

data is the parameter in push.send(registrationIds, data)

• See wns fileds

Note: Please keep in mind that if data.accessToken is supplied, each push notification will be sent after the previous one has been responded. This is because Microsoft may send a new accessToken in the response and it should be used in successive requests. This can slow down the whole process depending on the number of devices to send.

ADM

The following parameters are used to create an ADM message:

const data = Object.assign({}, _data); // _data is the data passed as method parameter
const consolidationKey = data.consolidationKey;
const expiry = data.expiry;
const timeToLive = data.timeToLive;

delete data.consolidationKey;
delete data.expiry;
delete data.timeToLive;

const ADMmesssage = {
  expiresAfter:
    expiry - Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) || timeToLive || 28 * 86400,
  consolidationKey,
  data,
};

data is the parameter in push.send(registrationIds, data)

• See node-adm fields

Web-Push

Data can be passed as a simple string payload. If you do not pass a string, the parameter value will be stringified beforehand. Settings are directly forwarded to webPush.sendNotification.

const payload = typeof data === 'string' ? data : JSON.stringify(data);
webPush.sendNotification(regId, payload, settings.web);

A working server example implementation can be found at https://github.com/alex-friedl/webpush-example/blob/master/server/index.js

Resources

• Crossplatform integration example using this library and a React Native app
• Web-Push client/server example
• Node Push Notify from alexlds

LICENSE

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2016 AppFeel

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

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