We are developing an iOS application which has a chat through JSQMessagesViewController and Firebase. When a message is sent by one user, the other user will receive a notification for the message. However, we desire a functionality where if the other user is in the chat, he should not receive the notification as he can already see all the chat-messages.
What is the best logic / way to implement this desired functionality?
Xcode 8.1, Swift 3, Firebase, JSQMessagesViewController
According to me there are two things that you can do:
1)You can use observers, like typing , for mapping two users when they are in private chat. Just make a status key on firebase and set it to true if two users are on chat page. In this case just don't send push as probably you are sending it from client end.
2)Or you can just ignore notifications when application is active when you see that payload has same user with which you are chatting.
You would probably need to add a presence management system. I did something similar on my app while using Firebase and JSQMessagesViewController, you could probably customize the system to your liking.
Depending on what you use database wise for incoming and outgoing messages with the JSQMessagesViewController library, you could probably set it up there as well.
Firebase has worked best for me for what you're looking to do:
https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/ios/offline-capabilities
Related
I'm been coding for a year now and know swift really well and the basics to javascript. I've built a social media like app and its completely done besides the push notification functionality... which i've been struggling with for quite a while now.
I'm having trouble figuring out how to implement these in order to send notifications like when a user follows another user or they receive a new messege.
I don't understand how to integrate the cloud functions that I would write using and node.js with my xcode project.
When I look for documentation online its usually just how to send push notifications using the firebase notifications console which is cool but doesn't trigger based off specific user actions or events (ex: when the user gets a new follower)
I think since im struggling with grasping the concept of how to implement it, the actual technical set up of it makes even less sense. Any advice or resources would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Conceptually, what you have to do is set up server-side processing of your database to manage when events occur. This is what the Node.js code will be. Everything is connected through the database-- your Xcode and Node.js code work independently, but both communicate with Firebase. You can create a Cloud Function that will automatically run when it detects changes in your database, and this will automatically send push notifications.
I've done a similar project-- I set up a listener for my Realtime Database in my Cloud Function. Every time the user got a new follower, i.e. their followers tree was updated, I sent a notification to the device using an FCM token (which I also stored in the database).
exports.onTimeEnd = functions.database.ref("users/{user}/followers")
.onUpdate((snapshot, context) => {
// your code here
}
In that block, you can call a .once() to find out the user's token to send them a notification with.
https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/get-started
This link here told me everything I had to do in regards to set up in the terminal. Super helpful.
I am developing an iOS app targeting iOS 9 and above using Swift 3 and xCode 8.
I have a "Contact ViewController" which contains multiple forms where user enters its data to submit. Collected data also contains users' e-mail address. I am validating all the information that entered by the user correctly.
So, what I would like to do is my "send" button to send the user's all data to an e-mail address.
Is this possible without using Mail App or its interface? Do I need additional framework for such functionality?
I appreciate your time and sharing your thoughts.
This is not possible secretly. You can't send an email from the users device via the Apple Mail app because the system will not allow that. You can prepare an email with all the data that opens and let the user send it to you by tapping "Send" in the NavigationBar. So yes, you would need another framework to do that.
But I would not use emails to do that. Just use a server you send the data to or a service like Firebase.
If you really have to send E-mails, and just pushing the data to a backend API is not enough:
This is not possible using built-in functionality, but you could leverage an external mail delivery service like Mailgun to send your mails. (From a security standpoint, this should be handled by a server and not by the app itself however.)
I'm looking for some guidance.
I'm using Firebase as the backend server for an app I'm building and I would like to alert users when somebody has either liked or disliked some content the user generated.
I understand that Firebase offers cloud messaging through which I can target very specific users and send updates to them; I have implemented that functionality. However, I would like to send updates based on changes in the database, and, as far as I understand, FCM is not built for this purpose.
I have come across OneSignal and it seems promising. Has anybody implemented this with Firebase and could it do what I'm looking for?
Thanks!
I have it set upon such a way that when a message is send by a user to another user, a notification is also send via OneSignal. You just need to store the OneSignal userId in a node with the firebase user UID.
I you like someone's content, then that would also send a notification out directly to the other user.
Is it possible to send a text immediately inside an app. I have implemented the sms send. I just want to bypass the screen where the user has to press send.
There is no way to bypass the MFMessageViewController screen where the user has to tap "send." I assume Apple has designed it this way to prevent an app from potentially spamming a user's contact list.
In addition, there is no way to detect income SMS. Both these features are strictly reserved for the native Messages app.
For more information on sending an SMS on iOS check this out.
One alternative is to implement sending and receiving messages within your app using a web service to store and retrieve messages. For example, you could use a messages library like JSQMessagesViewController documented here and for simplicity's sake, you could use a BaaS like Parse.
I'm developing an app that creates a simple document with basic information created by the app. It won't contain any personal information, but it will contain data created and requested by the user. I want the user to be able to send this to themselves via email. I would also like to add the option for the user to have this file (which updates daily) to be able to send to them automatically every week/month, so they won't have to think about it. The user can set the intervals themselves.
Is this possible? The user will set up this option themselves from a menu, so it's not like they won't know it's happening. Every automatic mail will also contain information on how to turn the option back off again.
Is this possible and is it allowed by Apple?
Thanks for your reply
It is not possible from within the app. A user has to explicitly send the email through the MFMailComposeViewController.
If you want this functionality, you should build a backend for your app.
To clarify, if you want to use the users configured accounts; i.e. the account they use with Mail, then no you cannot do this automatically. The other answers rely on the fact a user enters their POP/IMAP settings, which personally I would never do.
You could use an email service as mandril or mailgun, to send emails "from your app".
Take a look at this: https://github.com/rackerlabs/objc-mailgun
There's a library called MailCore that's incredibly powerful. You can use it to send mail in the background of your app without needing to present the built in mail composer view
https://github.com/MailCore/mailcore2