Is it possible to send custom push notifcations to users?

General Discussion
1

Im currently developing an app in Swift. I’m at the last stage of the app where I just need to integrate push notifications to the lock screen when certain user actions occur.

I’m going for something like how Instagram sends a push notification when a new user follows you or likes your post.

My entire backend is using firebase, and i’ve looked into firebase cloud messaging and I dont know if it has the capability to perform notifications like this.

I’ve watched tutorials and read documentation and I know you can push notifications to users from the console but I’m looking for notifications to be published and pushed based off specific user actions.

I know this is a very broad questions so what I want to know is:

A) Are notifications like instagram possible through Firebase cloud messeging?

B) If not, can you point me in the direction of how to figure this out?

Thank you!

2

I was searching for something similar and came across your post. Looks like it’s been a year and no one has answered you! I just started in January 2023, so I’m a total newbie. I need to write an app that notifies a user of tasks they still need to do every day at noon and was wondering how this is done. Your question makes me realize maybe I need to learn about Firebase? I’m totally lost and was hoping someone had been able to point you in the right direction in the past year! If so, could you share what you have learned?

3

@jhcarter1960

Hi Janet,

Welcome to the community.

If the App you want to write is not a multi user application relying on centralised data and having to log in, then in your case you would not need to use push notifications. You can use local Notifications which you can configure to popup a notification on the Home Screen (and a banner if you need to) so that the App user is made aware that a task is due.

Here is a video from Chris Ching on Local Notifications. This is done in UIKit

This tutorial from Paul Hudson is done using SwiftUI.

4

Chris,

Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction! I’m sure you’ve save me a ton of time going down the wrong “rabbit hole”. I will definitely be watching these videos. Thanks again for your help!