For up-to-date product documentation, see the IBM MobileFirst Foundation Developer Center.

Sending push notifications

When we have set up push notification, as tag-based or broadcast-enabled, we can send push notifications from the server.

We can send push notifications using the methods:

• By using MobileFirst Operations Console, two types of notifications can be sent: tag and broadcast. For more information, see Sending push notification with the MobileFirst Operations Console.
• By using Push Message (POST) REST API. All forms of notifications can be sent: tag, broadcast, and authenticated.
• By using REST API for the MobileFirst Server administration service. All forms of notifications can be sent: tag, broadcast, and authenticated.

We can send the following notifications using the push notification service:

Broadcast notification

You must set up broadcast notifications to send a notification for the required applications.

For more information, see Broadcast notifications.

Tag-based notification

You must set up tag subscriptions to send a notification for the required applications.

For more information, see Set up tag-based notifications.

Unicast notification

The userId(s) must be the user IDs that were used to subscribe to the push notification. The user ID in the user subscription can come from the underlying security context or be a user ID explicitly set by your mobile app. A user ID explicitly set by your mobile app is also called an application user ID (appUserId).

Note: Unicast notification does not contain any tag in its payload. The notification message can target multiple devices or users by specifying multiple deviceIDs or userIDs respectively, in the target block of POST message API.

Platform or environment-based notification

We can send a platform or environment-based notification in the following way:

• Specify the platform or platforms as an array in the target.platform object. The supported platforms are as follows:
  • A (Apple)
  • G (Google)
  • W (Windows)

• Sending push notification with the MobileFirst Operations Console
  The IBM MobileFirst Platform Operations Console provides a GUI for an administrator to work with push notification to update credentials, setup tags and send notifications.

Parent topic: Push notification