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GCM Playground

A reference implementation of a GCM Application Server in the form of a playground that developers can use to test the Google Cloud Messaging Service.

Introduction

GCM Playground can be used to experiment sending and receiving messages with the Google Cloud Messaging API. The playground can be used as a sample implementation of the GCM App Server, that you can use as a reference for your own app server implementation.

What's Included

• App Server (server/): Written in Go (Golang) is a GCM Application Server.
• Playground UI (web/): Made with Polymer, it is the main component that you will for sending downstream messages and receiving upstream messages.
• Client apps (android/, chrome/, web/): These client apps are used in conjunction with the playground UI to test various features of the GCM API.

Pre-requisites

• Learn more about Google Cloud Messaging
• Watch the "Re-engage your users with GCM notifications" DevByte video

Getting Started

Configuration

Before you can start using the GCM Playground you need to configure a project and create credentials for access:

1. Follow this link to get a configuration file to use GCM.

• If you want to use the Android client, configure your app to use com.google.samples.apps.gcmplayground for the package name. You can use a different package name if you want, but then you have to adapt the source code of the Android client accordingly. At the end of the configuration flow, download the configuration file to the android/app folder.
• If you want to use the iOS client, use the bundle ID of an app that has the Push Notifications feature enabled, and upload its Development SSL Certificate when requested to do so. At the end of the configuration flow, download the configuration file to your machine.
• If you want to use the Chrome App, just configure the project to use an Android client.

2. After you enable Cloud Messaging, the configuration flow shows you your values of Server API Key and SenderId. Replace the placeholders value in server/server.go with the value you obtained:

server/server.go

// API key from Cloud console
apiKey = ""

// GCM sender ID
senderId = ""

web/app/settings.json

You should only need to change the IP address here. Replace 192.168.99.100 with the IP address that docker-machine ls gives you.

"main": {
  "sendMessageEndpoint": "http://192.168.99.100:4260/message",
  "clientsEndpoint": "http://192.168.99.100:4260/clients",
  "socketEndpoint": "http://192.168.99.100:4260/"
},

Installation - App Server and Playground UI

• Install Docker, Docker Compose, and if using on a Mac Docker Machine.
• Install Node.js >=0.12.0.
• Clone this repo.
• $ ./start.sh

If the last command fails, you might need to give execute permission to the script. Do $ chmod +x start.sh and retry.

Accessing services - App Server and Playground UI

If using docker machine, run docker-machine ls to find out the VM IP address.

The ports that are being used are:

• 3000 - Playground Web UI
• 4260 - App server

So if your IP is 192.168.99.100, load 192.168.99.100:3000 in the browser of the computer running docker to access the Playground UI.

If you want to access the Playground Web UI using a mobile client instead of the computer running docker, you need to tunnel the app server traffic so it's accessible via the public network. To do that, download ngrok and run $ ./ngrok http <IP ADDRESS>:4260. Alternatively, you could also deploy the playground on any public cloud and use the server's address.

Android App

Included in android/ is an Android app that can help you get started with the playground. The Android app lets you:

• Register and unregister the client with the backend.
• Receive messages sent through the playground.
• Subscribe to topics using Pubsub.
• Send upstream messages.

Getting Started

• Open Android Studio.
• Select File > Open, browse to where you cloned the gcm-playground repository, and open the android folder (if you are in the Android Studio start screen, you can select Open an existing Android Studio project and use this same path).
• Make sure that the configuration file is in the right place. Check the Configuration section above for instructions.

Usage

• Run the sample on your Android device.
• Provide a string identifier for your device (e.g. "My Nexus5"), and click REGISTER.
• Use the playground web UI to send a message to the registered device.
• A notification containing the GCM message should be displayed on the device.

iOS App

Included in ios/ is an iOS app that can help you get started with the playground. The iOS app lets you:

• Register and unregister the client with the backend.
• Receive messages sent through the playground.
• Subscribe to topics using Pubsub.
• Send upstream messages.

Getting Started

• If you don't have CocoaPods installed on your machine, follow the instructions and istall it.
• Open a terminal window and navigate to the gcm-playground/ios folder and run pod install.
• Run open GCM Playground.xcworkspace to open the project in xcode.
• In xcode, replace the project bundle ID with the bundle ID that you have used in the configuration flow.
• In xcode, add the configuration file previously downloaded to the GCM Playground target. Check the Configuration section above for instructions.

Usage

• Run the sample on your iOS device.
• Provide a string identifier for your device (e.g. "My iphone6"), and click Register.
• Use the playground web UI to send a message to the registered device.
• A notification containing the GCM message should be displayed on the device.

Note: You need Swift 2.0 to run the app.

Chrome App

Included in chrome/ is a Chrome app that can help you get started with the playground. The Chrome app lets you:

• Register the client with the backend
• Receive messages sent through the playground

Usage

• Open Chrome and go to menu > Tools > Extensions.
• Click Developer mode > Load unpacked extensions...
• Browse to and Select the chrome/ folder.
• On the Extensions page, Launch GCM Playground Receiver app.

Support

• Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/google-cloud-messaging

If you've found an error in this sample, please file an issue: https://github.com/googlesamples/gcm-playground/issues

Patches are encouraged, and may be submitted by forking this project and submitting a pull request through GitHub.

License

Copyright 2015 Google, Inc.

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.