Setup Push Notifications on Android¶

Prerequisite¶

Finished Getting Started with GetSocial Android SDK guide.

Setup Android Push Notifications¶

GetSocial supports sending push notifications via Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM).

Follow FCM official guide.
Login to the GetSocial Dashboard.
Go to the Notifications section → Settings tab.
Enable Android notifications by clicking on the switch and fill in API Key and Sender ID values.

You can find API Key (Server key) and Sender ID in your application settings in Firebase developer console.
Go to Templates tab and select what kind of notifications users will receive:
Check notifications texts and translations.
Send a test notification to your test device to check your setup.

Autoregister for Push Notification on the Client Side¶

By default GetSocial SDK automatically registers at the push server, and the user will start receiving push notifications.

To prevent auto registration and register for push notifications manually:

Add autoRegisterForPush property to the GetSocial configuration in the Android application build.gradle:
```
getsocial {
    ...
    autoRegisterForPush false
}
```
To start receiving GetSocial push notifications call:

```java tab=”Java”
GetSocial.registerForPushNotifications();
```
```kotlin tab="Kotlin"
GetSocial.registerForPushNotifications()
```

If you’re not using GetSocial Gradle Plugin check how to disable auto registration for push notifications in the Manual Integration Guide.

Handle Click on Push Notifications¶

Select Activity to Open¶

By default, click on the GetSocial push notification will start launcher activity. If you want to open other activity on notification click, add the <intent-filter> with action getsocial.intent.action.NOTIFICATION_RECEIVE to the activity that should be opened:

<activity ...>
    ...
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="getsocial.intent.action.NOTIFICATION_RECEIVE"/>
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

GetSocial UI¶

If you are using GetSocial UI, SDK will open corresponding view after clicking on GetSocial push notification. For instance, if someone liked your activity or commented under your activity, this activity will be shown on GetSocial notification click.

Important

If GetSocial View is opened automatically by GetSocial UI, you can not set the custom title, UiActionListener, action button handler, etc. In this case, we recommend you to override the default behavior and open GetSocial View by yourself.

Notification Listener¶

You can customize the default behavior and handle clicks on GetSocial push notifications on your own. Also, you can listen for GetSocial notifications when an application is running in the foreground when the notification was received. To do so, set the NotificationListener in onCreate method of your Application or Activity:

```java tab=”Java”
GetSocial.setNotificationListener(new NotificationListener() {
public boolean onNotificationReceived(Notification notification, boolean wasClicked) {
if (!wasClicked) {
return false;
}
boolean isHandled = handleAction(notification.getAction());
return isHandled;
}
});

```kotlin tab="Kotlin"
GetSocial.setNotificationListener { notification, wasClicked ->
    if (!wasClicked){
        return@setNotificationListener false
    }
    val isHandled = handleAction(notification.action)
    return@setNotificationListener isHandled
}

Read how to handle actions.

wasClicked parameter is true when the application was opened by push notification click or false if the application was in the foreground when the notification was received.
In the example above return a boolean: true, if notification is handled by your method handleAction(action), or false if it is not. If you return false, SDK will handle the notification.

Tip

If you are not using GetSocial UI, we recommend to handle push notifications by yourself - better user experience would be to react to notification actions.

Show Push Notifications In Foreground¶

If you want to show GetSocial push notifications while app is in foreground - set foregroundNotifications to true in the GetSocial configuration in your build.gradle:

getsocial {
    ...
    foregroundNotifications true
}

If you’re not using GetSocial Gradle Plugin check how to enable foreground notifications in the Manual Integration Guide.

If foregroundNotifications is set to true:

Notifications will be shown when your application is in foreground.
NotificationListener will be called after clicking on the notification; parameter wasClicked will be true.

Disable Push Notifications For User¶

If you want to disable push notifications for the user, use GetSocial.User.setPushNotificationsEnabled(false, callback). When push notifications are disabled, you still can query for GetSocial Notifications via data API.

To enable push notifications use GetSocial.User.setPushNotificationsEnabled(true, callback). To check current setting value use GetSocial.User.isPushNotificationsEnabled(callback).

Customize Push Notification Icon¶

Notification icon has to be monochromic white image on the transparent background.

By default, GetSocial SDK will use application icon as the push notification icon.

There are two ways to customize the icon. The first option is to put an image with name getsocial_notification_icon into res/drawable folder.

If you want to use an existing icon for notifications, you can set the resource name in the Android Manifest. For instance to use ic_notification_custom.png from res/drawable:

<application ... >
    ...
    <meta-data
        android:name="im.getsocial.sdk.NotificationIcon"
        android:resource="@drawable/ic_notification_custom" />
    ...
</application>

As a result all notifications coming from GetSocial SDK will use custom icon:

To change the color of the notification(in hex format):

<application ... >
    ...
    <meta-data
        android:name="im.getsocial.sdk.NotificationColor"
        android:resource="#FFCCBBDD" />
    ...
</application>

Also, you can customize large notification icon using manifest. To use ic_large_notification_icon.png from res/drawable:

<application ... >
    ...
    <meta-data
        android:name="im.getsocial.sdk.LargeNotificationIcon"
        android:resource="@drawable/ic_large_notification_icon" />
    ...
</application>

Customize Push Notifications Channel¶

All GetSocial notifications come to a separate notifications channel with ID getsocial_channel_id. By default, channel is called Social and has empty description. Name is localized to all GetSocial supported languages.

To customize channel name or description, add the following meta data pointing to the string resource to AndroidManifest.xml:

<application ... >
    ...
    <meta-data
        android:name="im.getsocial.sdk.NotificationsChannelTitle"
        android:resource="@string/getsocial_notifications_channel_title" />

    <meta-data
        android:name="im.getsocial.sdk.NotificationsChannelDescription"
        android:resource="@string/getsocial_notifications_channel_description" />
    ...
</application>

To check your customization, on your phone (Android O, API 26 and higher) go to Settings → Apps and Notifications → [YOUR APP NAME] → Notifications and find your channel. Description can be checked after pressing the channel name at the bottom of the screen.

Background Images¶

Starting from version 6.28.0 GetSocial supports adding a background image to a notification, which helps your notifications to stand out from the crowd of notifications.

Notification With Background Image

Using Smart Templates¶

You can specify a background image when you create a Smart Targeting template:

GetSocial Dashboard - Notification With Background Image

Besides configuring the background image, you can also define the color of the title and text.

Using SDK¶

It is also possible to send a notification using GetSocial SDK:

```java tab=”Android”
final NotificationContent notificationContent = NotificationContent
.notificationWithText(“Wow, what a background!”);
String backgroundImageUrl = …; // url of the background image
NotificationCustomization customization = NotificationCustomization
.withBackgroundImageConfiguration(backgroundImageUrl)
.withTitleColor(“#000000”) // set color as ARGB string
.withTextColor(“#000000”); // set color as ARGB string
notificationContent.withCustomization(customization);

GetSocial.sendNotification… // send notification

```kotlin tab="Kotlin"
val notificationContent = NotificationContent
    .notificationWithText("Wow, what a background!")
val backgroundImageUrl = ... // url of the background image
val customization = NotificationCustomization
        .withBackgroundImageConfiguration(backgroundImageUrl)
        .withTitleColor("#000000") // set color as ARGB string
        .withTextColor("#000000"); // set color as ARGB string
notificationContent.withCustomization(customization)

GetSocial.sendNotification... // send notification

Best Practices

Add your application’s icon to the left side of the background image, so your users will know immediately to which application it belongs.
To support portrait and landscape mode with all the possible devices we suggest to set an image in 2600x256 size.

Next Steps¶

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