Push notifications to a specific user?

Forum Moderators: phranque

Message Too Old, No Replies

Push notifications to a specific user?

csdude55

7:56 pm on Jan 11, 2018 (gmt 0)

I'm specifically trying to find a way to alert a user when they get a new Private Message on my site. It's a very common request, but I'm still coming up empty.

I first started trying to build an app that would just change a number on the icon on their home screen, then when the user clicks they would be directed to the website, but this doesn't seem to be possible >:-( And I've spent a lot of time and money to find that out!

So I'm back to looking at push notifications. Everything I can find seems to just send the same alert to everyone at once, but that's not what I need. I just need the user to get a notification when he gets a message.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I can do it in Perl, PHP, or jQuery, but I'm on a semi-managed server so I'm open to installing anything.

NickMNS

8:18 pm on Jan 11, 2018 (gmt 0)

As far as I know the only way to do this is using js service-workers. Service-workers are not supported by Safari and not on IOS devices. I have used them in the past for developing progressive web-apps but I didn't implement push-notifications but the functionality is supported and well documented. The one good things is that they degrade gracefully, so IOS users will simply miss out on some functionality but will not be hindered from using the other features of the website. The PWA/Service-workers allow users to install a desktop icon so push notifications display on the desktop icon like a native app.