Web Push Notifications Tutorial

This is a tutorial and demo for web push notifications that work in modern web browsers. Frontend is written in vanilla JavaScript, while the backend is using the ASP.NET Core 2.1 framework.

If you are searching the node.js version of this sample, you can find it here.

How to use

First, install all .NET dependencies via dotnet restore.

This demo uses an in-memory SQL database instance for storing push subscription info to send push updates at some other point in time. It also requires specifying a public and private key for identifying your server to the push service's server. These keys, known as VAPID public/private keys, can be generated and printed to the console when first executing the site. The site can be executed by running dotnet run which will start a server on https://localhost:5001. You'll need to populate those keys as environment variables and execute dotnet run again to ensure that push messages can be configured from your server.

You should set the environment variables mentioned above in your appsettings.json file as follows:

{
  "Vapid": {
    "Subject": "mailto:email@outlook.com",
    "PublicKey": "YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY",
    "PrivateKey": "YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY"
  },
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "Database": "Server=(localdb)\\mssqllocaldb;Database=PushDemoInMemoryDb;Trusted_Connection=True;ConnectRetryCount=0"
  },
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Warning"
    }
  },
  "AllowedHosts": "*"
}

Key components of the sample

The following files contain code that's related to generating VAPID keys, registering a push subscription and sending push notifications.

ASP.NET Core backend

• appsettings.json Contains VAPID keys and the database connection string.
• Startup.cs Configures the app and the services it uses, including the database connection.
• PushController.cs Contains the API endpoints.
• PushService.cs Contains the Push service which is used to manage saving subscriptions to the database and sending push notifications.

Frontend

• Index.cshtml Contains the sample's UI.
• service-worker.js Contains the sample's service worker which gets registered and will manage the incoming push notifications.
• script.js Runs after DOM is loaded and contains methods for service worker and push subscription registration.
• util.js Contains methods for push subscription management.

Running the Azure Function App

The service which is sending the periodic push notifications (7AM Pacific Standard Time every day) is using Azure Funtions to run periodically. You can run it locally by calling func host start in the PushnotificationsDemoFuntion folder. You need to create a copy of settings.json with the name of local.settings.json and fill the VAPID keys.

If you want to run the Function App more frequently for debugging for example, you can use something like this: 0,15,30,45 * * * * *. This will run every 15 seconds.

Contributing

If you'd like to contribute to this sample, see CONTRIBUTING.MD.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Questions and comments

We'd love to get your feedback about the Microsoft Graph Connect Sample for ASP.NET Core. You can send your questions and suggestions to us in the Issues section of this repository.

Questions about Microsoft Edge in general should be posted to Stack Overflow. Make sure that your questions or comments are tagged with [microsoft-edge].

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Copyright

Copyright (c) 2018 Microsoft. All rights reserved.