web-push

Web Push library for Node.js

Supports Firefox 44+ and Chromium/Chrome 42+. Notifications with payloads are supported in Firefox 44+ and Chromium/Chrome 50+. VAPID is supported in Firefox 45+ (for notifications without payloads).

sendNotification(endpoint, params)

Send a Push notification to an endpoint. params containes optional parameters:

• TTL is a value in seconds that describes how long a push message is retained by the push service (by default, four weeks);
• userPublicKey is the public key of the receiver (from the browser);
• userAuth is the auth secret of the receiver (from the browser);
• payload is the message to attach to the notification.
• vapid an object with parameters for VAPID.

Note that, in order to encrypt the payload, userPublicKey and userAuth are required.

The properties of the vapid objects are:

• audience, the origin of the application server;
• subject, a contact URI for the application server (either 'mailto:' or 'https:');
• privateKey;
• publicKey.

The function returns a Promise. On success, it is resolved to the body of the response from the push service. On failure, it is rejected with a WebPushError, which extends an Error with the following properties:

• statusCode, the status code of the response from the push service;
• headers, the headers of the response from the push service;
• body, the body of the response from the push service.

generateVAPIDKeys()

Generates the keys needed for VAPID. Returns an object with two properties: privateKey and publicKey. The keys should be stored and always reused when sending notifications with VAPID.

setGCMAPIKey(apiKey)

Sets the GCM API key that the library should use in making requests to GCM endpoints (in Chromium/Google Chrome).

• apiKey is your GCM API key, you can obtain it from the Google Developer Console.

encrypt(userPublicKey, userAuth, payload)

Encrypts the payload according to the Message Encryption for Web Push standard. (sendNotification will automatically encrypt the payload for you, so if you use sendNotification you don't need to worry about it).

• userPublicKey is the public key of the receiver (from the browser);
• userAuth is the auth secret of the receiver (from the browser);
• payload is the message to attach to the notification.

Examples

The Service Worker Cookbook is full of Web Push examples using the web-push library.

Projects using web-push

• Mercurius - A generic Web Push server. See also the blog post on the Mozilla Hacks blog: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/12/web-push-notifications-from-irssi/.
• TicTacToe with offline and Push support using Service Workers - https://github.com/marco-c/tictactoe
• Push API MDN demo - https://github.com/chrisdavidmills/push-api-demo - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API/Using_the_Push_API

Running tests

Selenium tests require Firefox or Chromium/Chrome. You can either use your installed versions or let the tests download the browsers for you.

FIREFOX="stable" CHROME="nightly" npm test

Possible values for FIREFOX and CHROME are:

• "stable", the test will automatically download the stable version;
• "nightly", the test will automatically download the nightly/canary version;
• path to the Firefox/Chromium binary, the test will use it instead of automatically download the browser for you.

In order to make the tests run in Chromium/Chrome, you also need a GCM API key and you need to define a GCM_API_KEY environment variable:

GCM_API_KEY=your_API_key FIREFOX="stable" CHROME="nightly" npm test