Push Notifications SDK#

Use the Push Notifications SDK to send push notification campaigns, including rich push notifications with images to your users.

Platform Support#

This SDK supports both iOS and Android. iOS 10+ and Android SDK >= 26 (Oreo) are supported.

Quick Start#

The SDK comes with a sample script that will register for push notifications. Add this to your project and set the relevant settings in the editor under Project Settings.

Registering for Push Notifications#

To register for Push Notifications, three steps are required.

1. Populate settings in the editor. These can be found in Project Settings > Services > Push Notifications.
2. Initialize Unity Services, so the required analytics events can be sent to Unity Analytics. You also need to implement the privacy flow for the required events to be sent correctly.
3. Register for notifications in the startup code for your game, to ensure no notifications are missed. However, on first registration, a user is shown a permission request so ensure this call is made at a convenient place in your game. The SDK will handle the showing of notification content, including images, titles, and message body.

Code sample:

using Unity.Services.Analytics;
using Unity.Services.Core;
using Unity.Services.PushNotifications;
...

await UnityServices.InitializeAsync();   

bool userGaveConsent = ...;

if (userGaveConsent)
{
	AnalyticsService.Instance.StartDataCollection();
}

try
{
    string pushToken = await PushNotificationsService.Instance.RegisterForPushNotificationsAsync();

    PushNotificationsService.Instance.OnRemoteNotificationReceived += notificationData =>
    {
        Debug.Log("Received a notification!");
    };
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    Debug.Log("Failed to retrieve a push notification token.");
}

Notification Received callbacks#

You can register a delegate to receive a C# event callback when a notification is received, to perform custom behavior at that point. To do this, add a delegate/method callback to PushNotifications.OnNotificationReceived as shown in the sample above.

Push Notifications settings#

The SDK requires a number of settings to function correctly. Some settings are only used on a certain platform, indicated in the setting name. The following Android (Firebase) settings can be set:

You can find these settings in the Unity Editor -> Edit -> Project Settings -> Services -> Push Notifications. The values for all the fields below is found in the “Settings” page of your Firebase dashboard.

• FirebaseWebApiKey: The "Web API Key" for a Firebase project to be used for Android's Firebase Cloud Messaging API. If this isn't shown for your project, you might need to enable Firebase Authentication prior.
• FirebaseProjectNumber: The “Project Number” to be used for Android's Firebase Cloud Messaging.
• FirebaseAppID: The “App ID” for a Firebase application to be used for Android's Firebase Cloud Messaging API.
• FirebaseProjectID: The “Project ID” for a Firebase project to be used for Android's Firebase Cloud Messaging API.

These settings are set in Edit -> Project Settings -> Services -> Push Notifications.

You must enable the Cloud Messaging API for newer projects:

1. Select the three dots next to the disabled Cloud Messaging API (Legacy).
2. Select ENABLE Cloud Messaging API (Legacy).
3. Refresh your Firebase console.

Analytics#

The SDK records two Analytics events:

• notificationServices: This event is recorded whenever a new token is registered on the client. It contains the push token and is used to register this token with the backend service, to send notifications from the Unity Cloud Dashboard, and is required for proper functionality of this product.
• notificationOpened: This event is recorded whenever a notification is opened by a user. It contains data regarding which campaign and cohort the user was in, and whether the app was launched from the notification.

Analytics-only mode#

It's possible to integrate the SDK with an existing push notification service if required. To do so, do not call the registration methods as indicated above, and instead use the two methods in PushNotificationsService.Instance.Analytics alongside your existing implementation.

RecordPushTokenUpdated should be called when you receive a new push token for a device. Note that the OS may create a new token at multiple points in the app's lifecycle, so call this whenever the token changes, and not just at startup. The full call is PushNotificationsService.Instance.Analytics.RecordPushTokenUpdated(token);

RecordNotificationOpened should be called when a notification is opened. It takes a dictionary that is the data the notification payload contained, and a boolean flag to indicate whether the app was launched from the notification or not. The full call is PushNotificationsService.Instance.Analytics.RecordNotificationOpened(notificationData);

Note that this should allow you to send and schedule notifications from the Unity Cloud Dashboard. However, it greatly depends on the other push notification implementation you have implemented, and may lead to missing images or other content in notifications, so it's strongly recommended to use the standard set up, with this SDK being the only Push Notifications solution integrated, if possible.

Testing the SDK integration#

You can test the Push Notifications SDKs integration by following these steps within your app.

1. Within your app, fetch the PushNotificationsService token and write it to the log using `Debug.Log`.

2. Follow the debugging guide for Android or the Build and Run guide for IOS, depending on your target platform, to run your app.

3. Read the app logs to fetch the logged token.

   1. For Android: Use the Android Logcat package.
   2. For IOS: Check the logs inside XCODE when running the app.

4. Within the Unity Cloud Dashboard, go to an existing Push Notification Campaign or create a test one.

5. Inside the Content step, create your notification if necessary and select Test on Device.

1. Select the target device and input the fetched token.

1. Select Send and see if the device receives the notification.

External Dependency Manager for Unity (EDM4U) support#

Other SDKs or Unity Packages, including Google’s Firebase unity packages, use the External Dependency Manager for Unity (EDM4U) or Mobile Dependency Resolver (MDR) to resolve their dependencies inside the Unity Project.

The Push Notifications SDK does not require the use of EDM4U or MDR to resolve its dependencies within the Unity project, nor does it redistribute or use EDM4U or MDR by default.

However, starting from version 3.0.1-pre.1, if either EDM4U or MDR is used, the Push Notifications SDK integrates with them by generating a dependency file (PushSDKDependencies.xml) for them to use inside the automatically generated Assets/Push Notifications/Editor/Android directory.

Before building your application, you should run Resolve or Force Resolve (Both under Assets -> External Dependency Manager -> Android Manager) to make sure that the dependencies for the Push Notifications SDK are resolved. You can verify these dependencies have been resolved by using the Display Libraries option (Assets -> External Dependency Manager -> Android Manager -> Display Libraries)

The following line should appear:

implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-messaging-ktx:22.0.0' // Assets/Push Notifications/Editor/Android/PushSDKDependencies.xml:9

Note that the comment might be different if other packages also require the same dependency. If this is the case, EDM4U will list in the adjacent comment all files from where the dependency was extracted. So long as the dependency file path (Assets/Push Notifications/Editor/Android/PushSDKDependencies.xml:9) appears within the comment, you can be sure that EDM4U / MDR has detected and read the dependency file successfully.

If this line does not appear, ensure that the dependency file exists under the Assets/Push Notifications/Editor/Android directory, and try using the Force Resolve option again (Assets -> External Dependency Manager -> Android Manager -> Force Resolve).

If the dependency file hasn't been generated, re-open your project. The dependency file should be generated as part of this process.