Push

What is Push?

Push is the fastest way to get up and running with Javascript desktop notifications. A fairly new addition to the official specification, the Notification API allows modern browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and IE 9+ to push notifications to a user's desktop. Push acts as a cross-browser solution to this API, falling back to use older implementations if the user's browser does not support the new API.

You can quickly install Push via npm:

npm install push.js --save

Or, if you want something a little more lightweight, you can give Bower a try:

bower install push.js --save

For more information regarding the Push NPM package, see here.

See It In Action

Before you go out and try Push for yourself, you probably want to confirm it actually works in your browser, right?

Lucky for you a demo is available here.

Creating Notifications

So just how easy is it to create a notification using Push? We can do it in just one line, actually:

Push.create('Hello World!')

No constructors, just a universal API you can access from anywhere. Push is even compatible with AMD as well:

define(['pushjs'], function (Push) {
   Push.create('Hello World!');
});

If the browser does not have permission to send push notifications, Push will automatically request permission as soon as create() is called. Simple as that.

Closing Notifications

When it comes to closing notifications, you have a few options. You can either set a timeout (see "Options"), call Push's close() method, or pass around the notification's promise object and then call close() directly. Push's close() method will only work with newer browsers, taking in a notification's unique tag name and closing the first notification it finds with that tag:

Push.create('Hello World!', {
    tag: 'foo'
});

// Somewhere later in your code...

Push.close('foo');

Alternatively, you can assign the notification promise returned by Push to a variable and close it directly using the promise's then() method:

var promise = Push.create('Hello World!');

// Somewhere later in your code...

promise.then(function(notification) {
    notification.close();
});

When it comes to clearing all open notifications, that's just as easy as well:

Push.clear();

Options

The only required argument in a Push call is a title. However, that doesn't mean you can't add a little something extra. You can pass in options to Push as well, like so:

Push.create('Hello World!', {
    body: 'This is some body content!',
    icon: {
        x16: 'images/icon-x16.png',
        x32: 'images/icon-x32.png'
    },
    timeout: 5000
});

Available Options

body: The body text of the notification.
icon: Can be either the URL to an icon image or an array containing 16x16 and 32x32 pixel icon images (see above).
onClick: Callback to execute when the notification is clicked.
onClose: Callback to execute when the notification is closed (obsolete).
onError: Callback to execute when if the notification throws an error.
onShow: Callback to execute when the notification is shown (obsolete).
tag: Unique tag used to identify the notification. Can be used to later close the notification manually.
timeout: Time in milliseconds until notification closes automatically.

Credits

Push is based off work the following work:

marcdibold / push.js