Liveblog Firebase

Integrates Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) into the liveblog module.

This module contains the FirebaseNotificationChannel plugin, which acts as an app server to send data messaged to a client app via the FCM connection server using HTTP.

It also implements a JavaScript client app, which handles the data messages. Since this is a Service worker app these pages must be served over HTTPS, and are only supported by these browsers:

Chrome: 50+
Firefox: 44+
Opera Mobile: 37+

Restrictions

There is a payload limit of 4KB for data messages & 2KB for notifications.

Although both notification and data messages can be send through FCM, this module only implements data messages which are processed by the client app.

Local development & testing

Secure host is needed for FCM & when registering a service worker

Create a self signed certificate:

a2enmod ssl
a2ensite default-ssl
openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout my.key -out my.crt
# modfiy sites-enabled/default-ssl.conf and add your cert key & file.
# @see /usr/share/doc/apache2/README.Debian.gz
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Run chrome with this argument, otherwise service-workers will not be registered:

google-chrome --ignore-certificate-errors

Uninstall a service worker

If you change the service worker, you need to uninstall it in the browser, so the new version will be loaded. You can unregister the worker from there:

chrome://serviceworker-internals/