GCM Topic Messaging feature for Chrome extensions

[Bernardo Hernández]

I'm developing a chrome extension and I want to implement GCM with topic subscriptions, but apparently is not yet supported.

https://developers.google.com/cloud-messaging/chrome/client

Can you please add support for Topic Messaging?

https://developers.google.com/cloud-messaging/topic-messaging

Links of Android and iOS implementations:

https://developers.google.com/android/reference/com/google/android/gms/gcm/GcmPubSub

https://developers.google.com/cloud-messaging/ios/api/gcm/interface_g_c_m_pub_sub

Also, I found this blog post about this feature implemented in Chrome Web Apps, but I think I can't use it in a Chrome Extension:

http://updates.html5rocks.com/2015/03/push-notificatons-on-the-open-web

Thank you.

[Filip Gorski]

Hi, Bernardo,

Thanks for reaching out.

Could you please explain in a bit more detail if you want it to work for? Would simply using push messaging be enough or do you need a pub-sub support?

GCM is already available in Chrome apps and extensions API though chrome.gcm API: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/gcm

When we understand your scenario better we can decide how to best help you.

Thanks.

Filip

[Bernardo Hernández]

I'm developing a Chrome extension and I've already implemented GCM without issues.

But now, I want to use a new GCM feature released at Google I/O 2015 called "Topic Messaging", but I can't, because is not yet implemented.

This feature is explained in this I/O session video https://youtu.be/gJatfdattno?t=14m25s (14:25).

I would like to see something like this in the API:

chrome.gcm.subscribe(registrationToken, topic, options, callback);

chrome.gcm.unsubscribe(registrationToken, topic, callback);

Thanks.

[Filip Gorski]

Hi, Bernardo,

Since the feature is not yet developed and we don't have much resources to do it right now, we are collecting input from developers on how that feature is going to be helpful (So that we can compare with other things we are working on). That is what I would like to hear from you.

I know what feature you are referring to and we do have a vision regarding the shape of the API. Thanks for your input on that.

I need to understanding how you and other developers want to use it and what cannot yet be done with regular GCM. Could you please share that information? (You can share it directly if you don't want to make such statement in public.)

Thanks.

Filip

[Bernardo Hernández]

Hi, Filip

I'm developing a news reader application for Android, iOS, Chrome, and other platforms and I have a server that send push notifications to each platform.

But send notifications with "Registration IDs" isn't optimal when I want to send a "generic" notification, because I have to make 1 HTTP request to the GCM server for every 1000 IDs, causing a server slow down.

So, with Topic Messaging, I can send generic notifications with a single HTTP request for the GCM supported platforms.

Also, with that feature, I will be able to send notifications based in the interests of the user.

[Douglas Manley]

This is exactly the problem that we're having with our project.  We have a system that needs to broadcast out updates to everyone using the system.  Everyone using the system will receive the same update, so there's no need to individually message each user.  We want the users to subscribe to the general update "topic", and then when the system has something to broadcast, it just makes a single post to the GCM service and every user receives the message.

In particular, we do not want to track all of these registration IDs and maintain their state information when we don't care at all about sending an individualized message out.  The amount of work that we had anticipated doing was minimal (server sends when it has something to say; clients subscribe to message topics right away), but this is going to complicate things significantly.  Basically, we have to build a whole cloud-messaging system, handle and age-out registrations, etc., when we just wanted to quickly get notifications up on screens.

We are looking forward to topic-messaging support in Chrome.

[Filip Gorski]

Hi, Douglas,

We still don't have resources to develop topic messaging in Chrome. Could you share numbers about your application? How many users/clients do you have? Are you hitting storage limitations for registration IDs or some other technical bottleneck (e.g. request rate to GCM server), or is it just the code to use these something you would rather not develop, debug and maintain?

Thanks.

Filip

[Doug Manley]

It's a "paging" app for our local fire company.  When a new run comes in, I want to send it out to everyone.  Obviously, topic-based push would be awesome here.  However, the "notification key" stuff looks promising.  It's fairly cheap (labor- and time-wise) to have the client send its registration ID, which would then be immediately added to a notification key and not stored on our side.  The largest piece of work would then be all of the error-handling that comes back when the server sends a new message (the "downstream error message response codes").  That's the route that we're going to take for now.

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[Filip Gorski]

Notification key sounds like a good idea, that will help you limit the number of registration IDs to manage.

Please reach out if you need help with the implementation.

Regards,

Filip

[Grant GUO]

Hi Douglas,

I have the similar issues as yours

Did you try notification key Filip suggested? 

在 2015年10月5日星期一 UTC-4下午12:56:14，Douglas Manley写道：

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[JM Lambert addeective]

with the arrival of chrome extension manifest v3, the need for pushing messages from server side is getting much stronger. The limitation of the current gcm API (1000 destinations) as stated above is definitely a concern. Please consider porting the FCM topic registration.