Sending Push Notifications to Facebook Friends

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hi, hopefully someone can help me with this.

I’m going to be working on an app that will send push notifications between users, as well as other things. I’ve setup some Facebook SSO bits and pieces, and that seems to work (I can log in/out and fetch a list of my Facebook friends, plus post to my own wall + photos).

What I’m looking at now is finding out how to pick one of those friends and send a message to them if they have the app, or post a “someone sent you a message, get this app to receive it” type of message to their wall if they do not.

I’ve been looking for some tutorials or something but nothing seems to be quite what I’m after, but surely there must be some functionality like this. I would imagine one of the main advantages of Facebook integration is being able to share the app virally, and to easily play/communicate with friends? I’m not sure how you would single out the friends mobile device to send the message to, out of all the potential users.

Also, I’m looking at possibly using PubNub to send the messages, if that’s any help.

If anyone can point me in the right direction I’d be very appreciative.

Thanks [import]uid: 84115 topic_id: 20917 reply_id: 320917[/import]

#2

PubNub needs the client open to get messages, I didn’t think it was apples push notification.

I would think you would need to do something like this:
Have your own server (or hosted)
store your users facebook ID with their Push ID
then when need to send a message that a user is friends with you can look them up on your own server
and init a push message to their devices. [import]uid: 110373 topic_id: 20917 reply_id: 82521[/import]

#3

Thanks for that, does anyone have any recommendations on where to go for a server that would be suitable and relatively cheap?

Edit: in fact the cost I can look at myself - but I’m a bit of a noob when it comes to server stuff so I’m not sure what I should be looking for. A tutorial for native push notifications recommended using a VPS like Linode, but I’m not sure what kind of RAM and storage I’d be looking at for an app like this (Basically: storing facebook ID with device ID, and handling push notification script). [import]uid: 84115 topic_id: 20917 reply_id: 85512[/import]

#4

I want to achieve exactly what you are describing here. I’d appreciate it so much if you could help me out in setting this up. I get how you access the user’s facebook ID but what is and how would you get their Push ID?.. and how would you save it to a server db? I have a shared hosting godaddy account, would this work with this setup? I’ve not worked with push notifications before, is this something I can do for free?

#5

As this thread is more than three years old, is there anything new in the modern ways of Corona SDK and Facebook API that lets you just do this app to app without requiring a server?

#6

Actually things have gotten more difficult. Facebook now only lets you get a list of friends who have your app installed. Facebook is becoming much more difficult to work with. I also don’t know what, if any push notification services Facebook offers. Most push services are blast services (like Urban Airship, Pushwoosh, etc.). However Parse.com, OneSignal, and some other services will let you register your app with them and other data, like their facebook ID. 

#7

Hi Rob. Sorry to seem ignorant but please could you give me an example of how to use OneSignal with facebook ids to send app to app notifications. I’m not sure I understand the process. Do I need my own server for storing id data or can this be stored on the OneSignal servers?
The idea is that the user of my app can login with facebook, choose a friend from the list generated by facebook.request(), and then send a push notification to them. Is this possible? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

#8

I’ve never used OneSignal. Someone from the community will have to help you.

Rob

#9

I want to achieve exactly what you are describing here. I’d appreciate it so much if you could help me out in setting this up. I get how you access the user’s facebook ID but what is and how would you get their Push ID?.. and how would you save it to a server db? I have a shared hosting godaddy account, would this work with this setup? I’ve not worked with push notifications before, is this something I can do for free?

#10

As this thread is more than three years old, is there anything new in the modern ways of Corona SDK and Facebook API that lets you just do this app to app without requiring a server?

#11

Actually things have gotten more difficult. Facebook now only lets you get a list of friends who have your app installed. Facebook is becoming much more difficult to work with. I also don’t know what, if any push notification services Facebook offers. Most push services are blast services (like Urban Airship, Pushwoosh, etc.). However Parse.com, OneSignal, and some other services will let you register your app with them and other data, like their facebook ID. 

#12

Hi Rob. Sorry to seem ignorant but please could you give me an example of how to use OneSignal with facebook ids to send app to app notifications. I’m not sure I understand the process. Do I need my own server for storing id data or can this be stored on the OneSignal servers?
The idea is that the user of my app can login with facebook, choose a friend from the list generated by facebook.request(), and then send a push notification to them. Is this possible? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

#13

I’ve never used OneSignal. Someone from the community will have to help you.

Rob