Firebase GCM intergration.

[Kennedy Nyaga]

Now that Firebase is part of Google I guess we can summarize where the loyalty should be. Firebase is a good tool but when an application is not active, Firebase is not active. This has resorted to us dev's coining ways to keep the system running such as a listener on Heroku. 

It would be amazing to see Firebase integrate GCM directly into the SDK, Atleast the downstream that does not require an active XMPP server.


Regards,
Kennedy Nyaga

[Frank van Puffelen]

Hey Kennedy,

Thanks for the feedback. It would indeed be great if Firebase had a closer integration with Google Cloud Messaging. If we ever release something like that, you can rest assured we'll communicate it widely and loudly. :-)

In the meantime setting up a small (Heroku, GCE/GKE or other) server/VM would indeed be the way to go. Keep in mind that you can use the Firebase Database as the intermediary between the app and this server. So you app pushes the "notification requests" to the database, the server process listens for those requests, calls GCM for each and then removes the request from the database. Such a server process would be an example of Pattern 2: Firebase-powered app with server code.

    puf