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Pushes

The Push feature is designed to send silent notifications with normal priority to your applications through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM).

These silent notifications let your applications know when a flag changes in real time, so you can fetch the client cache and keep it always updated.

Create a Push​

To create a push notification, access the Settings menu on the left sidebar, navigate to the Pushes tab, and click on the + Add button.

  • Name: This identifies the push. Bucketeer recommends using descriptive names.
  • Firebase Cloud Messaging Service Account: This allows the Bucketeer to request the OAuth Access Token, which is needed to send notifications.
  • Tags: Add tags related to the flags you wish to monitor. Upon updating or modifying a flag with the provided tag, the push notification will be triggered. You can select one or multiple tags to trigger the push notification.
Tag selection

You can include multiple tags while creating a push. However, for larger user groups requiring numerous notifications, there might be a time delay or potential server overload on FCM.

Bucketeer's team suggests using distinct FCM service accounts for each user group and associating specific tags with each group. This strategy minimizes the number of notifications to be sent when a flag changes.

FCM Service Account

Please be aware that you can only create one Push using the same FCM service account.

Create push

After defining the Name, FCM Service Account, and the Tags, click on Submit to create the push.

Push notifications restrictions​

To Bucketeer send silent notifications, it depends on whether users have granted permission and how the platform manages background tasks. Here's a breakdown for both Android and iOS:

Android​

Silent notifications can be sent without explicit user permission, but background task limitations and restrictions may apply.

iOS​

Users must grant the Background App Refresh permission to receive silent notifications. Refer to the flowchart below for an overview of the push notification process.

Auto cache updates

Even if the user doesn't receive notifications, the client SDK will continue polling the latest cache from the server in the background.

Update user evaluation in real time​

When using the FCM integration, your applications must subscribe to Bucketeer's topic, so they can receive notifications.

The topic varies depending on the feature flag tag.
E.g: bucketeer-<YOUR_FEATURE_FLAG_TAG>

Bucketeer will send the notification including the data {"bucketeer_feature_flag_updated":"true"}, so you can check if you need to fetch the client cache.

Subscription Topic

The tag in the topic is the same tag used when initializing the client SDK.
If you have a flag using the android tag, the topic will be bucketeer-android.

// In order to receive notifications you must subscribe to the topic
private fun subscribeToTopic() {
  val tag = "android" // The same tag used when initializing the client SDK
  Firebase.messaging
    .subscribeToTopic("bucketeer-$tag")
    .addOnCompleteListener { task ->
      var msg = "Subscribed successfully"
      if (!task.isSuccessful) {
        msg = "Failed to subscribe"
      }
      Log.d(TAG, msg)
    }
}

override fun onMessageReceived(remoteMessage: RemoteMessage?) {
  remoteMessage?.data?.also { data ->
    val isFeatureFlagUpdated = data["bucketeer_feature_flag_updated"]
    if (isFeatureFlagUpdated == "true") {
      // The callback will return without waiting until the fetching variation process finishes
      val timeout = 1000 // Default is 5 seconds

      val future = client.fetchEvaluations(timeout)
      val error = future.get()
      if (error == null) {
        val showNewFeature = client.booleanVariation("YOUR_FEATURE_FLAG_ID", false)
        if (showNewFeature) {
            // The Application code to show the new feature
        } else {
            // The code to run when the feature is off
        }
      } else {
        // Handle the error
      }
    }
  }
}