Send FireBase Push notifications from PHP Application

Hello,

Recently in one of my project we have mobile applications with PHP web services. In this we have a requirement to send Firebase Push notifications from PHP to mobile app. Here in this blog I am going to explain how to do this.

First all login to your Firebase console and get the Web Api key. Go to https://console.firebase.google.com/ and login with your user name and password.

Select your project

Click on gear icons on left and select project settings and above screen will be displayed. Here Web Api Key is the key which you need. copy it. Now let see code one by one.

$url = 'https://fcm.googleapis.com/fcm/send';

This is the URL we will use to send push notification.

Now lets build the payload.

$fields = array (
'to' => 'REGISTRATION_KEY',
"notification" => array(
"title"=> "Welcome To App",
"body"=> "App Description"
),
"data"=>array(
"key_1"=>"value_1",
                        "key_2"=>"value_2"
)
);

Here to is the filed which contains registration id for the device. This is the id which you get when you register device for push notification.

notification contains title and text to be displayed in notification area. This is a standard format and should not be changed.

data contains all the user defined data you want to send with notification, you can add any number of key value pairs here.

If you don't want to pass any data, remove the data field from payload. So now payload is read now lets encode it to send.

$fields = json_encode ( $fields );

Now send headers with API key.

$headers = array (
'Authorization: key=' . "YOUR_WEB_API_KEY",
'Content-Type: application/json'
);

Now we will use PHP cURL to send HTTP request.

$ch = curl_init ();
curl_setopt ( $ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url );
curl_setopt ( $ch, CURLOPT_POST, true );
curl_setopt ( $ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers );
curl_setopt ( $ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true );
curl_setopt ( $ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $fields );

$result = curl_exec ( $ch );
echo $result;
curl_close ( $ch );

That's it and Push notification is sent to particular device.

Push Google Cloud Message (GCM) from PHP Web Application

In this blog I am going to explain how to push a Google Cloud Message (GCM) from PHP web application.

First of all you will need API key from your Google API account. Go to Google API console and add GCM t your API project and generate a key for Android.  This key you have to add in your PHP script.

Now add following function to your PHP script.

public function send_notification($registatoin_ids, $message) {
     
        // Set POST variables
        $url = 'https://android.googleapis.com/gcm/send';
        $apiKey = 'your_api_key';
     
        $fields = array(
            'registration_ids' => $registatoin_ids,
            'data' => $message,
        );

        $headers = array(
            'Authorization: key=' . $apiKey,
            'Content-Type: application/json'
        );
        // Open connection
        $ch = curl_init();

        // Set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);

        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

        // Disabling SSL Certificate support temporarly
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($fields));

        // Execute post
        $result = curl_exec($ch);
        if ($result === FALSE) {
            die('Curl failed: ' . curl_error($ch));
        }
     
        // Close connection
        curl_close($ch);
        return $result;
    }

As you can see above function takes registration id and message as param and use curl to send push message to particular device. Registration is is unique per device for all the android phones.