How to send notification using postman on a firebase realtime database trigger?

Question

I have written a cloud function in Javascript that is supposed to send a notification if a change occurs in the database.

I have logged the values in the code and I am even getting a response in admin.messaging().sendToDevice(token, payload). And everything looks fine from the log in my Firebase Console, but I am not receiving any notification on my device. Also, the postman is set up correctly cause I do receive a notification when I press the Send button on the Postman.

This is my json body in Postman

{
  "to" : "dCDqZxTYq3s:APA91bFlbFd3hGUJuvjknPhivRLew69kM4KDrNJAOkIMT5WgsoHr_Uc_41xqeOtQJvMhvXO1S56v4aT_6Zd24rlGoD-AV7pyNFMw8AxdkmwZCS3HYDidO2-xX_Da8IGcuQTN3FrnIYKo",
 "data" : {
    "message" : "This is my data message",
    "title" : "This is my data title",
    "data_type": "direct_message"
  },
  "notification" : {
    "title": "This is a title",
    "text": "this is a notification"
  }
}

This is the index.js where my cloud function is written

const functions = require('firebase-functions');

const admin = require('firebase-admin');

admin.initializeApp(functions.config().firebase);

exports.sendNotification = functions.database.ref('/problemDetails/{problemId}').onUpdate((change, context) => {

    const problemId = context.params.problemId;
    console.log("problemId: ", problemId);

    //get the userId of the person receiving the notification because we need to get their token
    const senderId = change.after.child('userId').val();

    //get the status
    const status = change.after.child('status').val();


    // //get the user id of the person who sent the message
    // const senderId = event.data.child('user_id').val();  //THis should be mechID
    // console.log("senderId: ", senderId);



    if(status === 'Price set by mechanic'){
    //get the message
    const message = "The mechanics has set the price for your service. Please check your current order if you have to take any actions.";
    console.log("message: ", message);

    //get the message id. We'll be sending this in the payload
    const messageId = "messageId";
    console.log("messageId: ", messageId);

    //query the users node and get the name of the user who sent the message
    return admin.database().ref("/users/" + senderId).once('value').then(snap => {
        const senderName = snap.child("displayName").val();
        console.log("senderName: ", senderName);

        //get the token of the user receiving the message
        return admin.database().ref("/users/" + senderId).once('value').then(snap => {  //change senderId here to mechId who will be the receiver
            const token = snap.child("messagingToken").val();
            console.log("token: ", token);

            //we have everything we need
            //Build the message payload and send the message
            console.log("Construction the notification message.");
            const payload = {
                data: {
                    data_type: "direct_message",
                    title: "New Message from " + senderName,
                    message: message,
                    message_id: messageId,
                }
            };

            return admin.messaging().sendToDevice(token, payload)
                        .then(function(response) {
                            console.log("Successfully sent message:", response);
                          })
                          .catch(function(error) {
                            console.log("Error sending message:", error);
                          });
        });
    });
}
else{
    return null;
}
});

arpit kumar arpit kumar · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-23T18:50:33

I figured this out. This had nothing to do with postman. I got a little confused. In fact, the postman is not needed at all.

The problem is that my payload has no notification object that's why I wasn't getting any notification(yet the message was being sent and hence the logs).

Changing the payload to this works

        const payload = {
                data: {
                    data_type: "direct_message",
                    title: "New Message from " + senderName,
                    message: message,
                    message_id: messageId
                },
                    notification : {
                        title: "This is a title",
                        text: "this is a notification"
                }
            };

How to send notification using postman on a firebase realtime database trigger?

1 Answers