Getting Started

Set up your project to register users for Web Push NotificationsA message that appears in the top or bottom right corner of a web browser or in a notification center.On mobile devices, web push notifications appear similar to push notifications. and Web ScenesA single or multi-screen in-app experience cached on users’ devices and displayed when users meet certain conditions in your app or website, such as viewing a particular screen or when a Custom Event occurs. They can be presented in fullscreen, modal, or embedded format using the default swipe/click mode or as a Story. Scenes can also contain survey questions.. Both are referred to generally as “notifications” and “web notifications” on this page.

Airship supports web push notifications and Scenes on:

• Desktop: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Safari (v16 and above)
• Android Mobile: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera
• iOS and iPadOS Mobile: Safari (iOS and iPadOS 16.4 and above, as a standalone web app)

The Airship Web SDK is hosted on a secure content delivery network (CDN).

In order to enable these notifications, you will add two components to your site:

1. An asynchronous loading snippet that allows use of the SDK before and after it is fully loaded.
2. A service worker that handles incoming push requests and communicates with the Airship Service.

Resources

• Web SDK Reference
• Web Platform Overrides

Airship Setup

Begin by configuring your site in the dashboard. Navigation to the settings differs depending on whether you have App or Web ScenesA single or multi-screen in-app experience cached on users’ devices and displayed when users meet certain conditions in your app or website, such as viewing a particular screen or when a Custom Event occurs. They can be presented in fullscreen, modal, or embedded format using the default swipe/click mode or as a Story. Scenes can also contain survey questions. enabled for your project.

1. Go to Settings.
2. (If you do not have Scenes or have App Scenes only) Under Channels, select Web.
3. (If you have both App and Web Scenes) Under Channels, select Mobile App & Web. Then, under Platforms, select Web.
4. Configure default values for each field. The preview updates as you enter information. You can override your default values on a per message basis via the dashboard or API.

   Field	Description	Steps
   Default Title	The bolded title that appears above the message body, typically your brand name	Enter text.
   Default Action URL	The URL that opens when a user clicks/taps your message, typically your brand's homepage URL	Enter a publicly accessible URL.
   Default Icon URL	The path to the image that will appear in your web push notifications. If you have CDN enabled, you also have the option to upload an icon. See also Web icon in our Media guidelines documentation.	Enter a publicly accessible URL or select Upload icon and select an image file.

5. Manage the following options for websites where they are already in use. The options are not present when configuring a Web channel for the first time.

   Secure Bridge	Allows support for non-secure (non-HTTPS) websites	Toggle to enable or disable.
   AMP Support	Allows support for notifications on Accelerated Mobile Pages	Toggle to enable or disable.
   Safari Configuration	For configurations supporting Safari versions older than 16, these are the domains that are allowed to request Safari registration permission from the user, and the required Apple Safari Web Push certificate .p12 file and password	Enter the domains, starting with "http://" or "https://", either comma-separated or one per line. To replace the certificate, select Choose File, upload your .p12 file, and then enter the certificate password, if any.

6. Select Save. The button will be labeled Update if you are editing an existing configuration.
7. Select Download SDK Bundle and save the zip file.
8. Unzip the bundle so you can use its files to complete the next steps.

Add JavaScript Snippet to Web Pages

Locate file snippet.html in your unzipped SDK bundle and add the file content to all pages of your site.

This file provides an asynchronous loading snippet that allows use of the Web SDK before it loads and comes populated with the configuration values required for your site.

UA Object

The loading snippet adds a UA object to the global scope. This object is a Promise  which resolves to the SDK object:

const sdk = await UA
const {channelId} = await sdk.create()
console.log("Channel ID: %s", channelId)

UA.then(function (sdk) {
   sdk.create().then(function (result) {
      console.log("Channel ID: %s", result.channelId)
   })
})

iOS and iPadOS Safari

Apple added Safari support for web push in iOS and iPadOS 16.4. To use web notifications and Scenes on iOS/iPadOS devices, Apple first requires a user to save the website to their home screen as a web app. This essentially means bookmarking a web page by selecting the Share action and then Add to Home Screen. After that, you can direct users to take specific actions to opt in to receiving notifications.

Once opted in, users can manage those permissions per web app/site in their device Notifications settings. The notifications from web apps work exactly like notifications from native iOS and iPadOS apps and appear on the Lock Screen, in Notification Center, and on a paired Apple Watch.

In preparation for sending web notifications to your iOS and iPadOS users, you will need to configure your site to operate as a web app.

At a minimum, add the following metadata to the head of your pages, which specifies to the browser that an app can run in “standalone” mode:

<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
<meta name="mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">

If you are handling your own opt-in, you may also wish to handle iOS/iPadOS Safari opt-in differently, as calling sdk.register() will fail if the app is not running in standalone mode. The following SDK Properties are available:

• sdk.isSupported is true if the SDK can load and track events; web push support is not considered
• sdk.isWebPushSupported is true if the browser is supported and supports web push; it does not consider if the current context is supported (such as requiring it be added to the home screen on iOS)
• sdk.isAllowedPushRegistrationContext is true if the browser is currently in an allowed registration context; note this does not otherwise check for browser features, so should only be checked after an sdk.isWebPushSupported check
• sdk.canRegister() is a comprehensive check against all checks required for web push registration, and returns a promise which resolves to true if:
  • the browser supports web push
  • the page is a secure context
  • the browser is in an allowable context (such as being saved to the home screen on iOS)
  • push permission has not already been denied

When registering for web push, if isSupported is true and the value returned from canRegister() resolves to false, your site may be in a context that disallows registration. You can prompt the user to add the page to their home screen if they wish to receive notifications.

This can also be detected using the Navigator.standalone  property, which is only available on iOS/iPadOS Safari, using code similar to the following:

const sdk = await UA

const canRegister = await sdk.canRegister()
if (sdk.isSupported && !canRegister) {
   if ('standalone' in navigator) {
      // this is an iOS Safari context; prompt the user
   }
}

Place Service Worker

Web push employs a service worker, which runs as a background process until woken up to perform SDK tasks, e.g., displaying notifications.

Locate the service worker file push-worker.js in your unzipped SDK bundle and place it in the root directory of your site.

It is imperative that you do so at the beginning of your implementation so that your entire website is within the scope of the worker. The JavaScript snippet that you added to your site pages contains a URL for push-worker.js and assumes it is placed in the root. If you are unable to place the file at root, your entire site may not be able to access the service.

If you need to combine the push worker with an existing service worker, you may need to specify a new location for your worker file. You can do this by adding a workerUrl: '/service-worker.js', setting to your on-page snippet, inside your service worker.

For further reading on service workers, see these excellent primers from Google and Mozilla:

• Chrome Developers: Service worker overview 
• Mozilla Developer Network: Service Worker API 

Troubleshooting: Duplicate Web Notifications

If for any reason you have moved the service worker, e.g., from a non-root location to the root directory, users may receive duplicate push notifications.

This is because users may have a browser-cached service worker running even though the file has been moved, and subscriptions are tied to push worker location. If they register again with the new (or newly-moved) service worker, they will have a new channel ID.

self.onactivate = function (ev) {
  self.registration.pushManager.getSubscription().then(subscription => {
    if (subscription) {
      subscription.unsubscribe()
    }
  })
}

To help out in situations like this, we have provided a bit of code (think of it as a “cleanup” service worker) that can be placed at the location of the original service worker. The process here is simple. All you have to do is put this code in a push-worker.js file placed where your previous service worker lived.

Once you’ve done this, browsers will detect the change and unsubscribe any subscriptions tied to that worker location. And don’t worry, this will not affect your Airship channels or any registrations tied to any other service worker locations.

Send Your First Push Notification

Now that you have configured your project for web push and are able to register users, it’s time to send a test notification. You can do this via either the dashboard or our API.

To send a notification via the dashboard, see:

• Create a message and Web content.
• Create a Scene

To send a web push via our API, two examples are provided below, one only to web browsers, and one to web, iOS, and Android.

Web-Only Push

In this example, we will introduce the push object, the required request body for sending a web push notification via the push API, using the three required attributes audience, device_types, and notification.

Audience

We’ll start with the simplest audience selector possible: an individual channel ID. For testing purposes, you can retrieve your channel ID from a registered browser by entering the following in the JavaScript console:

const sdk = await UA
const channelId = await sdk.channel.id()
console.log("Channel ID: %s", channelId)

Device Types

Since we are only sending to web devices, we will specify the "web" device type as an array of one. In the next example, we will include additional device types.

Notification

Finally, we will specify the values for our test notification, including the alert text, and web push-specific attributes that we will include in the web platform override object. Platform overrides can be used either to override a value for a specific platform or to specify values that are only applicable to that platform.

POST /api/push HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Basic <master authorization string>
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: application/vnd.urbanairship+json; version=3

{
   "audience": {
      "channel": "<YOUR_CHANNEL_ID>"
   },
   "device_types": [
      "web"
   ],
   "notification": {
      "alert": "Hello, Web!",
      "web": {
         "title": "My First Web Push Title",
         "require_interaction": true,
         "icon": {
            "url": "https://example.com/icon.png"
         }
      }
   }
}

Push to Multiple Platforms

This example illustrates sending a web push notification to a named user, “sven_svensson”, who is registered on multiple platforms, including web.

In the top-level notification attribute of the payload, the value for the alert property is “Hello, World!”. Since we want our web users to experience the most relevant content possible, we are going to use the web override on the notification object to specify the more appropriate “Hello, Web!” alert message for web users.

POST /api/push HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Basic <master authorization string>
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: application/vnd.urbanairship+json; version=3

{
   "audience": {
      "named_user": "sven_svensson"
   },
   "device_types": [
      "web",
      "ios",
      "android"
   ],
   "notification": {
      "alert": "Hello, World!",
      "web": {
         "alert": "Hello, Web!",
         "title": "My First Web Push Title",
         "require_interaction": true,
         "icon": {
            "url": "https://example.com/icon.png"
         }
      }
   }
}

Additional Resources

• Web Content
• Web Platform Overrides

Web SDK

This section is an introduction to the Web SDK and associated methods.

Please visit our Airship Web SDK Reference for a complete reference.

UaSDK

The main Web SDK object. It cannot be instantiated manually. It is returned by the async loader.

Creating a Channel

You may create a channel by using the Airship SDK’s create method; using this method will make the current browser known to Airship, and allow you to use the SDK features.

const sdk = await UA
await sdk.create()

Registering for Push Notifications

Follow these steps to register the current browser with Airship.

• Fetch the browser’s subscription object, prompting the user for permission if necessary.
• Collect browser information for out-of-the-box tag segmentation.
• Register with Airship and resolve the returned channel object.
• Resolves an error that can be caught if there is an error while registering or if the browser is in an unsupported context.

const sdk = await UA

// now that the SDK is available, add a registration button to the DOM
const button = document.createElement('button')
button.innerHTML = "Register for Notifications"
button.onclick = async (el) => {
   await sdk.register()
}
document.body.append(button)

Checking Browser Capabilities

Make sure that the current browser has web push features AND is in a secure context capable of attempting registration.

• sdk.isSupported is true if the SDK can load and track events; web push support is not considered
• sdk.isWebPushSupported is true if the browser is supported and supports web push; it does not consider if the current context is supported (such as requiring it be added to the home screen on iOS)
• sdk.isAllowedPushRegistrationContext is true if the browser is currently in an allowed registration context; note this does not otherwise check for browser features, so should only be checked after an sdk.isWebPushSupported check
• sdk.canRegister() is a comprehensive check against all checks required for web push registration, and returns a promise that resolves to true if:
  • the browser supports web push
  • the page is a secure context
  • the browser is in an allowable context (such as being saved to the home screen on iOS)
  • push permission has not already been denied

Using these methods may be important if you wish to support Safari on iOS or iPad OS, as those have special requirements before push notification registration is allowed:

const permission = await sdk.getNotificationPermission()
if (permission === 'granted') {
  await sdk.register()
}

if (permission === 'denied') {
   // user has denied notifications at the browser level, and opt-in is not
   // possible without the user changing their browser settings
} else if (sdk.isWebPushSupported && !sdk.isAllowedPushRegistrationContext) {
  // prompt user to add the website to their home screen
} else if (await sdk.canRegister()) {
  // is in an allowed context; prompt the user to opt into push notifications
}

Channel Object

The property sdk.channel returns the channel interface for the current browser. It contains methods for retrieving or setting information on the channel.

const sdk = await UA
// the current channel id, a string. will be `null` if no channel exists
const channelId = await sdk.channel.id()
// the current opted-in status, a boolean
const optedIn = await sdk.channel.optedIn()
// opt out the channel for push notifications
const optedIn = await sdk.channel.optOut()

Event Listeners

The channel interface fires a channel event when a channel is loaded or registered.

const sdk = await UA
sdk.channel.addEventListener('channel', ev => {
   console.log('channel id:', ev.detail.id)
}, { once: true })

If you are on a page that is in-scope of your push-worker.js: The main SDK object fires a push event when the browser receives a push.

const sdk = await UA
sdk.addEventListener('push', ev => {
   // ev.detail is the push payload object
})

Apple Safari Web Push certificates

If your Web channel was already configured for Safari support, you must maintain your existing Safari certificate to keep supporting existing users who have opted in to web notifications, even if/when they upgrade to Safari 16 or above. Otherwise, you will need to rebuild your audience.

To create an Apple Safari Website Push certificate, you will need:

• An Apple Developer account
• A Certificate Signing Request (CSR). If you don’t already have this file saved locally, follow Apple’s instructions  to create one.

First, download your SSL certificate:

1. Log in to your Apple Developer account .
2. Go to Account, then Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles.
3. Select Identifiers, select the Website Push IDs filter, and then select your web push identifier from the list.
4. Select Create Certificate under Production Certificates. This will generate a Website Push Notification service SSL (Sandbox & Production) certificate compatible with both the Production and Development environments.
5. Select Choose File and upload your CSR file, and then select Continue.
6. Select Download and save the SSL certificate file for use in the next step. You may need to reload the page if the Download button is not yet active.

Next, install your certificate, export it as a .p12 file, and create a password:

1. Open the certificate you downloaded in the previous step. It should open in the Keychain Access app and be listed in My Certificates.

2. 

   Select the certificate in the list, then go to the File menu and select Export Items….

   Also be sure to select the My Certificates category in the sidebar. If My Certificates is not highlighted, you will not be able to export the certificate as a .p12 file.

3. 

   Save the file in the Personal Information Exchange (.p12) format.

   You will be prompted to create a certificate password, which you will enter when you upload the .p12 file in the Airship dashboard.

Now you can upload the .p12 file and provide the password when configuring the Web channel in the Airship dashboard.