this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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Native Push Notifications Support for NodeBB (community.nodebb.org)
submitted 9 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...

  1. 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.
  2. Then I wrote the PushBullet plugin, but they went from free to paid and that went out the window
  3. Around that time I wrote the Firebase plugin, which was a dead end because there was no iOS support.
  4. 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.

6da06989-f902-492b-866f-14c39b34a9ca-image.png

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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[–] d1re_w0lf@community.nodebb.org 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Hi. Just to be certain, push notifications still don’t work on iOS under NodeBB 4.4.4 with nodebb-plugin-web-push 0.7.4, right?

[–] bh4-tech@community.nodebb.org 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

D1re_W0lf Although I don't have an iOS device, but according to docs,on iOS web push notifications work on only those sites which have been added to home screen. So, add this site to home screen and check after few hours.

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 2 points 6 days ago

bh4-tech that's good to know, thank you!

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 6 days ago

D1re_W0lf mmm it should work but we don't have Apple devices to test against...

[–] pankaj-soni@community.nodebb.org 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This requires me to toggle this on by going to my user's profile. is there a way this can be made default 'on' for all users on platform?

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

@Pankaj-Soni yes and no... the enabling of the push notifications requires a discrete user action — the user has to actually press the switch to enable notifications.

There are ways we can advertise this to end users, so I will look into adding those soon. For now, users will have to go into their user settings to enable push notifications.

[–] bh4-tech@community.nodebb.org 1 points 4 months ago

@julian Just like @pankaj-soni , I too would like to have push notifications on by default

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 0 points 9 months ago (1 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 0 points 9 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:

22b1cb96-3763-48e9-b890-3f8443ace075-image.png

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 0 points 9 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 9 months ago (1 children)

julian when does 3.10 come out? 😁

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

phenomlab Right now :laughing:

[–] phenomlab@community.nodebb.org 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 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 9 months ago

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

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

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you do not receive any push notifications, it is likely because your browser is using an old, cached copy of the NodeBB service worker. You will have to wait for your browser to download the new service worker, or manually clear it.

Secondly, there is one specific caveat for this right now. Users on Safari currently do not use the service worker, and thus will not receive push notifications. This was due to a change in 2021 to work around a Safari bug, but I do not know at this time whether Safari has fixed the issue upstream.

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 9 months ago

I'm particularly excited about this new development because it opens the door for richer integration between NodeBB and the push notifications themselves.

With (probably) every iteration prior, when you clicked on the notification, it likely opened a new window. With direct access to the Push API and service worker, we can now accurately detect whether the site is already open (in another tab), and open it there.

In the future, we'll also be able to add in things like icons, pictures, and custom actions, right from the notification itself.

One particular nice-to-have is the ability to update notifications. Being able to merge notifications (like they already do in NodeBB) or potentially rescind notifications would be a nice step forward in usability as well.