Django Channels Notifications

Notifying users of various things that happen in your application is super easy to implement. Django Channels notifications allow you to send a message to any user via Email, Datbase, and many other channels.

Installation

1. Run the pip command to install the latest version:

 pip install django-channels-notifications

2. Add django_channels_notifications to your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

 INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'django_channels_notifications',
 )

3. Run the migration command:

 python manage.py migrate

Creating Notifications

In Django Channels Notifications, each notification is represented by a single class, and to create a new notification you can run the following manage.py command:

 python manage.py createnotification TestNotification

And this will place a fresh notification class with the below contents. Each notification class contains a via method and a variable number of message building methods (such as to_mail or to_database) that convert the notification to a message optimized for that particular channel.

from django_channels_notifications.core import Notification  
from django_channels_notifications.core.channels import DatabaseChannel  
  
  
class TestNotification(Notification):  
  
  # Get the notification's delivery channels.  
  def via(self, notifiable):  
        return [DatabaseChannel]  
  
  # Get the dict representation of the notification.  
  def to_database(self, notifiable):  
        pass

Sending Notifications

# Using The Notifiable Mixin

Notifications may be sent in two ways: using the notify method of the Notifiable mixin or using the NotificationSender . First, let's explore using the mixin:

 from django_channels_notifications.core import Notifiable
 from django.db import models

 class Profile(models.Model, Notifiable):  
	phone = models.CharField(max_length=255, verbose_name='Phone')
	address = models.TextField(max_length=512,verbose_name='Address')
	

Adding Notifiable mixin in your Profile model will allow you to easily send notifications to profiles using notify method. The notify method expects to receive a notification instance:

 profile = Profile.objects.get(pk=1)
 profile.notify(TestNotification());

Remember , you may use the django_channels_notifications.core.Notifiable mixin on any of your models. You are not limited to only including it on your Profilemodel.

# Using The NotificationSender:

Alternatively, you may send notifications via the NotificationSender . This is useful primarily when you need to send a notification to multiple notifiable entities such as a list of profiles. To send notifications using the NotificationSender, pass all of the notifiable entities and the notification instance to the send method:

 from django_channels_notifications.core import NotificationSender
 
 profiles = Profile.objects.all()
 NotificationSender.send(profiles, TestNotification())
 

# Specifying Delivery Channels:

Every notification class has a via method that determines on which channels the notification will be delivered. Notifications may be sent on the database, mail, unifonc channels.

The via method receives a notifiable instance, which will be an instance of the class to which the notification is being sent. You may use notifiable to determine which channels the notification should be delivered on:

 #Get the notification's delivery channels.
 def via(self, notifiable):
	 if notifiable.prefers_sms:
		return [UnifonicChannel]
	 return	[DatabaseChannel]
	 	     

Let's quickly go through the different notification channels supported by Django Channels Notifications.

• Database: This option allows you to store notifications in a database should you wish to build a custom UI to display it.
• Mail: The notifications will be sent in the form of email to users.
• Unifonic: As the name suggests, users will receive SMS notifications on their phone.

Database Channel

The DatabaseChannel notification stores the notification information in a database table. This table will contain information such as the notification type as well as custom JSON data that describes the notification.

# Formatting Database Notifications:

If a notification supports being stored in a database table, you should define a to_database method on the notification class. This method will receive a notifiable entity and should return a plain Python dict. The returned dict will be encoded as JSON and stored in the data column of your notifications table. Let's take a look at an example to_database method:

 # Get the dict representation of the notification. 
 def to_database(self, notifiable): 
    return {
        'invoice_id': 12,
        'amount': 200,
    } 
    

# Accessing The Notifications

Once notifications are stored in the database, you need a convenient way to access them from your notifiable entities. To fetch notifications, you may use the notifications method. By default, notifications will be sorted by the created_at timestamp:

 profile = Profile.objects.get(pk=1)
 
 for notification in profile.notifications():
     print(notification.type)

If you want to retrieve only the "unread" notifications, you may use the unread_notifications method and If you want to retrieve only the "read" notifications, you may use the read_notifications method. Again, these notifications will be sorted by the created_at timestamp:

 profile = Profile.objects.get(pk=1)
 
 for notification in profile.unread_notifications():
     print(notification.type)
     
 for notification in profile.read_notifications():
     print(notification.type)

# Marking Notifications As Read , Unread:

Typically, you will want to mark a notification as "read" when a user views it. The django_channels_notifications.core.notifiable mixin provides mark_as_read and mark_as_unread methods, which updates the read_at column on the notification's database record:

profile = Profile.objects.get(pk=1)

# Marking notifications as read
for notification in profile.unread_notifications():
    notification.mark_as_read()
    
# Marking notifications as unread   
for notification in profile.read_notifications():
    notification.mark_as_unread()    
    

Mail Channel

If a notification supports being sent as an email, you should define a to_mail method on the notification class. This method will receive a notifiable entity and should return a django.core.mail.EmailMessage or django.core.mail.EmailMultiAlternatives instance. Let's take a look at an example to_mail method:

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
 
 # Get the mail representation of the notification.
 def to_mail(self, notifiable):  
    return EmailMessage(
        'Hello',
        'Body goes here',
        'from@example.com',
        ['to1@example.com', 'to2@example.com'],
        ['bcc@example.com'],
        reply_to=['another@example.com'],
        headers={'Message-ID': 'foo'},
    )    

# Sending through "Mailgun" :

To use the Mailgun provider, you need to add the following parameters to your settings.py:

 EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.mailgun.org'  
 EMAIL_PORT = 587  
 EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'postmaster@msg.com' #please change this with your username  
 EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = '112233445566778899' #please change this with your password  
 EMAIL_USE_TLS  =  True

# Sending through "SES" :

To use the SES provider, you'll need Boto 2.1.0 or higher. Boto is a Python library that wraps the AWS API.

You can do the following to install boto 2.1.0 (we're using --upgrade here to make sure you get 2.1.0):

pip install --upgrade boto

Install django-ses:

pip install django-ses

Add the following to your settings.py:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django_ses.SESBackend'

# These are optional -- if they're set as environment variables they won't
# need to be set here as well
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'YOUR-ACCESS-KEY-ID'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'YOUR-SECRET-ACCESS-KEY'

# Additionally, if you are not using the default AWS region of us-east-1,
# you need to specify a region, like so:
AWS_SES_REGION_NAME = 'us-west-2'
AWS_SES_REGION_ENDPOINT = 'email.us-west-2.amazonaws.com'

Unifonic Channel

The UnifonicChannel notification allow you to sent the notification as SMS via Unifonic.

You need to add UNIFONIC_APPSID in settings.py:

 UNIFONIC_APPSID = "Your Unifonic APPSID" 

# Formatting Unifonic Notifications:

If a notification supports being sent as an SMS, you should define a to_unifonic method on the notification class. This method will receive a notifiable entity and should return a django_channels_notifications.core.channels.unifonic_channel.UnifonicMessage instance:

 from django_channels_notifications.core.channels.unifonic_channel import UnifonicMessage
 
 # Get the Unifonic representation of the notification.
 def to_unifonic(self, notifiable):  
    return UnifonicMessage().set_body('Your SMS message content').set_recipient(notifiable.phone)
    

# Customizing The "SenderID":

If you would like to send some notifications from a SenderID that is different from the default SenderID in your Unifonic account, you may use the set_sender_id method on a UnifonicMessage instance:

 from django_channels_notifications.core.channels.unifonic_channel import UnifonicMessage
 
 # Get the Unifonic representation of the notification.
 def to_unifonic(self, notifiable):  
    return UnifonicMessage().set_body('Your SMS message content').set_recipient(notifiable.phone).set_sender_id('Your SenderID')
    

Custom Channels

Django Channels Notifications ships with a handful of notification channels, but you may want to write your own channel to deliver notifications via other channels. Django Channels Notifications makes it simple. To get started, define a class that extended from django_channels_notifications.core.BaseChannel and contains a send method. The method should receive two arguments: a notifiable and a notification. or by run the following manage.py command:

 python manage.py createchannel TestChannel

 from django_channels_notifications.core import BaseChannel  
  
  
 class TestChannel(BaseChannel):  
	# Send the given notification.  
	def send(self, notifiable, notification):  
        pass
	 	     

Once your notification channel class has been defined, you may return the class name from the via method of any of your notifications:

class TestNotification(Notification):  
  
  # Get the notification's delivery channels.  
  def via(self, notifiable):  
        return [DatabaseChannel, TestChannel]  
  
  # Get the dict representation of the notification.  
  def to_database(self, notifiable):  
        pass
        
  # Get the dict representation of the notification.  
  def to_test(self, notifiable):  
        pass