Glue - Notifier

Glue micro service for sending push notifications through Firebase Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification Service.

To send a push notification you need to send a message to the store and this service will automatically detect a new one arrived and will deliver it to the recipients. Once delivered, the message in the store will be updated with the delivery status and timestamp of when it's been processed.

To send your messages to the store you can use the HTTP API or the AMQP message bus.

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Configuration

To send messages through the FCM service you need to configure the providers, fortunately this is really easy, see the example below:

{
  "my_app_1": {
    "key": "YyQNkQyud8TKPannjhqp7sYLxlCdSp9xZDtsrds3",
    "production": true
  },
  "my_app_2": {
    "key": "u6G4XwScP8m6blbUYRsz05sOPvqPyLoCD8DTMcVb",
    "production": false
  }
}

Each property of the configuration object is a unique ID that you'll be using to target the correct app when sending your messages. In each message you'll have to specify an application parameter, that points to the IDs in your configuration object. See the next section to have an idea how a message looks like.

Assuming you saved the configuration in /etc/glued/fcm.json you can then start your notifier micro service like so:

$ GLUED_NOTIFIER_FIREBASE_CONFIG=/etc/glued/fcm.json glue-notifier-firebase

Or you can set the GLUED_NOTIFIER_FIREBASE_CONFIG environment variable however you like.

Message

An FCM message is a simple object composed of:

• recipient (required, if recipients is not provided): the device token of the recipient device;

• recipients (required, if recipient is not provided): an array of device tokens of the recipient devices;

• message (optional): the content of the push notification;

• application (required): the ID of the application you are sending the notification to, this must match one in the configuration file (see above).

• payload (optional): additional payload that will be send together with the message;

• title (optional): a title for the notification.

An example of a well formed message is:

{
  "recipient":"APA91bF6dg7okdgKFEHcjeC1CTKN77XLVSauxCF1DL",
  "message":"You've received a new message, check your inbox!",
  "application":"my_app_1"
}

Apple Push Notification Service

Configuration

The configuration for the APN service requires a bit more parameters than FCM, but follows the same principles. You can wrap all your applications in an object where each property is a unique key and the value is the APN configuration that will be used to initialise each provider.

To see a full list of options refer to the node-apn documentation.

Example:

{
  "my_app_1": {
    "token": {
      "key": "path/to/key1.p8",
      "keyId": "T0K3NK3Y1D1",
      "teamId": "T34M1D1",
    },
    "production": true,
  },
  "my_app_2": {
    "token": {
      "key": "path/to/key2.p8",
      "keyId": "T0K3NK3Y1D2",
      "teamId": "T34M1D2",
    },
    "production": false,
  }
}

Assuming you saved the configuration in /etc/glued/apn.json you can then start your notifier micro service like so:

$ GLUED_NOTIFIER_APPLE_CONFIG=/etc/glued/apn.json glue-notifier-apple

Or you can set the GLUED_NOTIFIER_APPLE_CONFIG environment variable however you like.

Message

A message is composed of:

• recipient (required, if recipients is not provided): the device token of the recipient device;

• recipients (required, if recipient is not provided): an array of device tokens of the recipient devices;

• message (optional): the content of the push notification;

• application (required): the ID of the application you are sending the notification to, this must match one in the configuration file (see above).

• payload (optional): additional payload that will be send together with the message;

• expiry (optional): the timestamp when the notification expires, defaults to 8 hours after the sending;

• badge (optional): a number to show as a badge on the target device.

Example:

{
  "recipient":"a9d0ed10e9cfd022a61cb08753f49c5a0b0dfb383697bf9f9d750a1003da19c7",
  "message":"You've received a new message, check your inbox!",
  "application":"my_app_1"
}

Installation

You can install this library using npm:

$ npm install --save glued-notifier

To run the service you can install it with the -g flag and then run the glued-notifier-firebase and glued-notifier-apple commands:

$ npm install -g glued-notifier
$ GLUED_NOTIFIER_FIREBASE_CONFIG=/etc/glued/fcm.json glue-notifier-firebase
$ GLUED_NOTIFIER_APPLE_CONFIG=/etc/glued/apn.json glue-notifier-apple