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Native Push Notifications Support for NodeBB (community.nodebb.org)

submitted 11 months ago by julian@community.nodebb.org to c/nodebb-development@community.nodebb.org

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Our relationship with push notifications has been rather circuitous...

First Andrew (@psychobunny) tried plain desktop notifications via the Notification API (that's the desktop notifications plugin), but notification delivery stopped when you closed your browser.
Then I wrote the PushBullet plugin, but they went from free to paid and that went out the window
Around that time I wrote the Firebase plugin, which was a dead end because there was no iOS support.
I then wrote the ntfy plugin, which works really well, but does rely on a freemium third-party service and app (written by @binwiederhier@discuss.ntfy.sh)

Thanks to some recent discussion from @crazycells and @bh4-tech, I learned that the Push API had reached general availability across most modern browsers. In fact, this actually happened over a year ago, so compatibility should be even better.

So I set about working on yet another push notifications plugin, hopefully for the last time, and this time using the native Push API on the client-side.

To enable them, simply navigate over to the "Push Notifications" menu item in your user profile, and flip the switch.

So, let's dogfood! I de-activated the ntfy plugin on this site and activated the web-push plugin so you can try it out right now.

The plugin is in the proof-of-concept phase, so there might (read: most definitely will be) issues. Please let me know any you find here.

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[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The web-push plugin has now been promoted in v4 beta to "bundled" status, with a corresponding demotion of the ntfy plugin.

https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/commit/aa060d31d130cd54d18cd8dc2f25ba7de58f4fea

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The plugin also successfully removes notifications if they're no longer relevant (e.g. queued posts that have already been handled), and merges notification content just like it does in-app:

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

v0.7.0 of the Push Notification plugin has been released

Notification related service worker code that was initially included in v4 core is now served by the web-push plugin directly, allowing v3.x compatibility.
Compatibility updated from v4 to v3.10.x
- Meaning if you want to try this out on your existing NodeBB, you can do so by either waiting for v3.10.0, or by updating to the latest commit on the develop branch

[–] phenomlab@community.nodebb.org 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

julian when does 3.10 come out? 😁

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

phenomlab Right now :laughing:

[–] phenomlab@community.nodebb.org 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

julian Hmm - still not working for me... :-(

EDIT - works on my Android phone, but not on my PC - guessing it's likely security software. EDIT 2 - suspicion confirmed. It's caused by NordVPN. If running, the push notification doesn't work - if disabled, it works fine.

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 10 months ago

phenomlab said in Native Push Notifications Support for NodeBB: > NordVPN

Thanks for closing the loop! Kind of annoying that NordVPN blocks them...

[–] phenomlab@community.nodebb.org 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

julian Is there a link where we can install the v4 beta version of this plugin? I'd love to test it out over on Sudonix.

EDIT - NVM - I found the link..

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

phenomlab glad to hear you found it :smile:

For those interested in updating, you can just grab the latest commit from activitypub branch or perhaps the more the specific commit:

git fetch
git checkout activitypub    # if you're not already on activitypub branch
git reset --hard 86f624f8172fb96fbd3c83683affd8814e8b5156`

[–] phenomlab@community.nodebb.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

julian I'm using the GIT link you provided to install. Plugin installs fine, but cannot get it to send any notification - even on my mobile device which works fine for NodeBB?

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

phenomlab There's not terribly much to configure, just make sure that when you start NodeBB, that you see the output info: [plugins/web-push] VAPID keys OK.

That's how the messages are encoded to be sent to the corresponding browser push endpoints.

Other than that make sure the user has toggled push notifications on in their settings and allowed notifications for the site.

On Windows, you have to specifically also allow your browser access to send notifications to the user.

[–] phenomlab@community.nodebb.org 1 points 10 months ago

julian Yes, I've done that, but can't seem to make it work.