Send notification automatically from Firebase

Question

I am developing an android app using Firebase. Can Firebase send push notifications automatically when a record inserted to a table or I must implement my own server.

Solution 1

Since the 9th of march 2017 Firebase introduced “Firebase Functions”.It helps to trigger some events on specific dataset changes.These events could be then available in the Firebase Notifications Console to trigger the push Notification.

Take a look at https://firebase.googleblog.com/2017/03/introducing-cloud-functions-for-firebase.html

Solution 2

Firebase provides push notification but not on database table changes. What you can do, you can create listeners in a background service and fire a notification from those listeners.

For instance, for listening to changes in 'User' node.

 FirebaseDatabase myFirebaseRef = FirebaseDatabase.getInstance();
 DatabaseReference myRef = myFirebaseRef.getReference("User");

 ValueEventListener valueEventListener = new ValueEventListener() {
        @Override
        public void onDataChange(DataSnapshot dataSnapshot) {

                 //put your notification code here
            }

        }

        @Override
        public void onCancelled(DatabaseError databaseError) {
            Log.i("FirebaseError", databaseError.getMessage());
        }
    };

 myRef.addValueEventListener(valueEventListener);

Comments

[Arthur Thompson]

While this approach will work, long lived listeners can be taxing on the battery of a device. When your app is in the foreground listening is fine but once your app is in the background you should close your listeners.

[androidXP]

basically.this would work only for testing but not in real scenario cuz as @ArthurThompson said it will effect battery and network. Best to install Firebase SDK on your server where Your functions will listen change in your database via firebase functions and will make post request to FCM.

[Famic Tech]

Agreed with the two above comments, Firebase Functions is the only way to go. With the new feature added it would be foolish to implement any other workaround.