iOS Remote Notifications without Firebase

[lucadegasperi]

iOS Remote Notifications without Firebase

[helenaford]

hey, great question, it's something on our roadmap to make the integration with Notifee easier and more accessible for all configurations.

One concern is if the notification is made without Notifee it could cause issues when the event is returned in js-land.

Have you considered using NotifeeExtensionHelper (docs)?

[lucadegasperi]

Hello @helenaford, we already use a Notification Extensions in our app (not the Notifee one) (the notification extension is written in swift though) what's not clear to me is what the NotifeeExtensionHelper actually does behind the scenes, and how it solves the problem of delivering a remote notification through Notifee, and if there are other ways to do so without altering the notification payload.
Another question is: If I were to use the the NotifeeExtensionHelper, do I still need to install and configure Firebase for my iOS app in order to receive remote notifications via Notifee or will everything be handled by Notifee (except getting the remote notification token)?

Thank you for your patience

[helenaford]

@lucadegasperi ah ok, yeah we don't support swift 🤔 . The helper parses the payload so it can be handled by the library.

If you're not doing anything custom in your extension, I'd suggest recreating your app's Notification Service Extension in Objective-C and using the helper.

The helper does not depend on firebase, so any remote notification that contains the apns key notifee_options will work.

    apns: {
        payload: {
            aps: {
                'content-available': 1, // Important, to receive `onMessage` event in the foreground when message is incoming
                'mutable-content': 1, // Important, without this the extension won't fire
            },
            notifee_options: {
                image: 'https://placeimg.com/640/480/any', // URL to pointing to a remote image
                ios: {
                    sound: 'media/kick.wav', // A local sound file you have inside your app's bundle
                    categoryId: 'post', // A category that's already been created by your app
                    ... // any other api properties for NotificationIOS
                },
            },
        },
    },

The helper will access notifee_options via userInfo:
self.bestAttemptContent.userInfo[@"notifee_options"]

[helenaford]

@lucadegasperi to respond to your question around "if there are other ways to do so without altering the notification payload.", this is something we could look into. But it would require adding a flag somewhere to let notifee know you'd like us to handle the events. I've marked the issue as an enhancement for this reason. Hope that answers your question 😅

[lucadegasperi]

Thanks Again @helenaford. Just to make sure I understand things correctly, can the notifee_options be an empty object, or are the parameters like categoryId required, despite having them already defined at the top level of the notification?

[helenaford]

yeah, it will need to be in notifee_options.ios

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