node-apn provides a non-blocking, fully managed interface to push notifications to iOS devices using the Apple Push Notification System.
To begin using the APN Module simply let apn = require('apn').
If you are not familiar with how the Apple Push Notification System (APNS) works, it is recommended that you read the Local and Push Notification Programming Guide, in particular the section on The Path of a Remote Notification.
Sending push notifications starts with creating a connection to APNS using the apn.Provider class. This must be configured with your credentials issued by Apple - using Provider Authentication Tokens is preferred. The apn.Provider will manage underlying sockets automatically. You will never need more than one apn.Provider for each application, per-process. They should always be reused rather than recreated to achieve the best possible performance.
let provider = new apn.Provider({
token: {
key: "path/to/key.pem",
keyId: "key-id",
teamId: "developer-team-id"
},
production: false
});See the Provider documentation for more information.
To push a notification you will need a set of device tokens to send a notification to. These are in the form of a hex-encoded string (see example below). Information about getting device tokens can be found in Registering for Remote Notifications.
let deviceTokens = ["834c8b48e6254e47435d74720b1d4a13e3e57d0bf318333c284c1db8ce8ddc58"];You will also need something to send to the devices. A push notification takes the form of a JSON payload sent to Apple which is then relayed to the devices. node-apn provides the apn.Notification class, a programmatic interface to generate notification payloads.
let notification = new apn.Notification();
notification.alert = "Hello, world!";
notification.badge = 1;
notification.topic = "io.github.node-apn.test-app";See the Notification documentation for more information.
After you have created a Provider and a Notification you can send it to Apple. The module will take care of creating a secure connection, encoding the payload, transmitting it, handling errors and processing the response.
The send method returns a Promise which will be fulfilled when all notifications have been successfully sent, or failed due to an error. The resolved value contains information about successful transmissions as well as details of failures.
provider.send(notification, deviceTokens).then( (response) => {
// response.sent: Array of device tokens to which the notification was sent successfully
// response.failed: Array of objects containing the device token (`device`) and either an `error`, or a `status` and `response` from the API
});See the Provider documentation for more information.