Firebase Cloud Messaging

This page shows you how to receive Stream Chat push notifications using Firebase Cloud Messaging.

Configuring Notifications on the Stream Dashboard

To be able to receive notifications from Stream, you need to provide your Firebase credentials to Stream.

Go to the Firebase Console, and select the project your app belongs to.

Click on the gear icon next to Project Overview and navigate to Project settings:

Navigate to the Service Accounts tab. Under Firebase Admin SDK section, click on Generate new private key button that will generate a json file with the Firebase Credentials.

Open the Stream Dashboard. Navigate to the Chat Overview page for your app.

Scroll down and enable the Firebase switch. Paste the content of the json file with the Firebase Credentials that you downloaded during the previous step, and click Save to confirm your changes.

That's the server-side setup done. You can now receive push notifications from Stream Chat on the client side. To register devices and process these notifications, follow the steps below.

Receiving Notifications in the Client

We provide an artifact with all the implementation needed to work with Firebase. To use it follow the next steps:

Start by adding Firebase to your Android project. You only need to set up the FCM dependencies and add a google-services.json file to your project source directory.

Next, add the Stream Firebase push provider artifact to your app's build.gradle file:

dependencies {
    implementation "io.getstream:stream-android-push-firebase:$stream_android_push_firebase_version"
}

Finally, add the FirebasePushDeviceGenerator to your NotificationConfig and pass it into the ChatClient.Builder when you initialize the SDK:

val notificationConfig = NotificationConfig(
    pushDeviceGenerators = listOf(FirebasePushDeviceGenerator(providerName = "providerName"))
)
ChatClient.Builder("apiKey", context)
    .notifications(notificationConfig)
    .build()

boolean pushNotificationEnabled = true;
    List<PushDeviceGenerator> pushDeviceGeneratorList = Collections.singletonList(
            new FirebasePushDeviceGenerator(
                    "providerName"
            )
    );
    NotificationConfig notificationConfig = new NotificationConfig(true, pushDeviceGeneratorList);
    new ChatClient.Builder("apiKey", context)
            .notifications(notificationConfig)
            .build();

That's it. You can now receive push notifications from Stream via Firebase.

Using a Custom Firebase Messaging Service

This section is optional. The SDK already registers the device on the Stream backend on every ChatClient.connectUser(...) via FirebasePushDeviceGenerator (see the setup section above), so push notifications work without any extra code in a custom service.

You only need a custom FirebaseMessagingService if one of the following applies:

• You are using Firebase notifications for things other than Stream and want a single service to handle every Firebase message.
• You want your app to be notified when FCM rotates the token, so the SDK can update the device on the Stream backend right away rather than on the next connectUser.

In that case, your service must call into FirebaseMessagingDelegate:

class CustomFirebaseMessagingService : FirebaseMessagingService() {

    override fun onNewToken(token: String) {
        // Update device's token on Stream backend
        try {
            FirebaseMessagingDelegate.registerFirebaseToken(token, "providerName")
        } catch (exception: IllegalStateException) {
            // ChatClient was not initialized
        }
    }

    override fun onMessageReceived(message: RemoteMessage) {
        try {
            if (FirebaseMessagingDelegate.handleRemoteMessage(message)) {
                // RemoteMessage was from Stream and it is already processed
            } else {
                // RemoteMessage wasn't sent from Stream and it needs to be handled by you
            }
        } catch (exception: IllegalStateException) {
            // ChatClient was not initialized
        }
    }
}

public final class CustomFirebaseMessagingService extends FirebaseMessagingService {

    @Override
    public void onNewToken(@NonNull String token) {
        // Update device's token on Stream backend
        try {
            FirebaseMessagingDelegate.registerFirebaseToken(token, "providerName");
        } catch (IllegalStateException exception) {
            // ChatClient was not initialized
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void onMessageReceived(@NonNull RemoteMessage message) {
        try {
            if (FirebaseMessagingDelegate.handleRemoteMessage(message)) {
                // RemoteMessage was from Stream and it is already processed
            } else {
                // RemoteMessage wasn't sent from Stream and it needs to be handled by you
            }
        } catch (IllegalStateException exception) {
            // ChatClient was not initialized
        }
    }
}

Push Notification Payload

Push notifications are delivered as data payloads that the SDK can use to convert into the same data types that are received when working with the APIs.

When a message received by the Chat API, according to the delivery rules, it kicks a job that sends a regular data message (as below) to configured push providers on your app. According to the battery and the online status of the device, push providers deliver this payload to the actual devices. When a device receives the payload, it's passed to the SDK which connects to Chat API to receive regular message and channel records and unmarshals them into in-memory objects and gives control to you by passing these objects. At this point, your application can use these objects to generate any push notification to be shown to the user.

This is the main payload which will be sent to each configured provider:

{
  "sender": "stream.chat",
  "type": "message.new",
  "version": "v2",
  "message_id": "d152f6c1-8c8c-476d-bfd6-59c15c20548a",
  "id": "d152f6c1-8c8c-476d-bfd6-59c15c20548a",
  "channel_type": "messaging",
  "channel_id": "company-chat",
  "cid": "messaging:company-chat",
  "receiver_id": "company-chat-user1"
}