Notifier v0.8.1

You've got mail. - Elwood Edwards

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Dependencies
• Installation
• Three levels of Notifications
• Quick start
• Configuration
• ToDo list
• Troubleshooting
• Additional Files

Introduction

This package is made to send notifications to the users of your applications. It uses the service worker API to send these notifications even when your site is not active. A demo showing how to set this all up can be found here

It took me a while to figure all this out and I am by no means an expert. I just thought this might help people to make use of the new Notification capabilities of modern web browsers.

The configuration process for the service worker notifications is not as plug and play as other packages so please read the documentation carefully. Beware, in order to get it to work on anything but localhost, you will need an ssl certificate. Even on 192.0.0.1 it will NOT work without a certificate

Dependencies

• Accounts-password
• Erasaur:meteor-lodash

Installation

1. Call meteor add tomasdepomas:notifier in your console
2. Follow the steps under Getting started

Three levels of Notifications

This package facilitates three different levels of notifications:

• Meteor in app, or client notifications
• Web or window notifications
• ServiceWorker or push notifications

The package will keep track of which level of notifiaction is available and appropriate per user. The schematic below will show how messages are distributed.

..	Window is active	Window is inactive	Window is closed
window.Notification available	client	window	none
serviceWorker available	client	push	push
neither is available	client	client	none

* in the cases labeled none, the user will receive the notification the next time a window is active as a client notification

Getting started

For the Push notifications to work, you will need to do some setup with API keys and stuff:

• GCM- Android/Google
• APN - Apple (not yet implemented)
• MDN - Mozilla (not yet implemented)
• MPNS - Microsoft (not yet implemented)

The push notifications will only be available when you setup the service worker correctly. THIS DOES NOT WORK OUT OF THE BOX! Check the dedicated service-worker documentation.

To start the Notification processes and add configuration (have a look at the full documentation for the configuration options), call:

Notifier.start();

To allow your users to subscribe to the Service worker notifications, add the {{>notifierToggle}} template to your application, or bind the Notifier.subscribe() and Notifier.unsubscribe() functions to a custom event to subscribe your users.

In order to send a message to a specific user, use the following syntax:

Notifier.send(
	'Hello',            /* A message */
	'g8aQSJunen44ZK5nn' /* receiverId / userId */
);

For more options, check the Full documentation or have a look at the demo

ToDo list

• Code cleanup
• Look at Cordova possibilities
• Look at APN by Apple
• Look at MDN by Mozilla
• Look at MPNS by Microsoft
• Implement some sort of tests

Troubleshooting

If notifications do not show up when you expect them, add the {{>notificationStatus}} template to your code to check what the status of the package.

The permission for request is denied and now I cant reset it, To reset the permissions, have a look at your browser settings and search for messaging settings and removing the domain from the list of exceptions. Check chrome://settings/search#messages on Chrome or about:preferences#content on Firefox'.

If notifications do not work on your production server, but it did just fine on your local development environment, you might not have a SSL certificate installed on your production server.

Additional Files

• How to set up GCM and the Manifest file
• How to set up the service worker file
• Full documentation