How To Use Push Notification and Topics feature
Push notifications are a common feature of most mobile applications. Our push notification feature allows you to update and inform your users about new developments. The topics feature allows you to create topics your users can subscribe to. In this article, we are going to use the Topics and push notifications feature to build an app that sends updates and messages to your users based on what topic they subscribe to. Kindly follow the steps below to learn how to do this. If you require a visual aid, please watch this video; it thoroughly explains this article. Now let’s get started.
Step 1:
Go to the Swiftspeed homepage, log in, and you will be taken to the app creator dashboard. Click on “create a new application” or select a pre-existing app ( if you have one ). If you selected “Create a new application”, you will have to type in the name of your app and click “Create”. If you are not familiar with the app creation process, please read our article on creating an app on our platform.
Step 2:
Select “Features” from the side menu on the left side of your screen. Choose the “Topics” feature from the list of features and click on “Add feature” when the popup window appears. If you find it challenging to locate the “Topics” feature, you can use the search box to find it. Just type in “Topics” and press “Enter” on your keyboard.
Step 3:
In the Page settings section, you can change the feature icon by clicking on the image button to the left of the “Page name” label. Choose your new feature icon, and it will be saved automatically.
Click on the description tab and type in an appropriate description for your page in the text box provided. Click save when you are done.
Step 4:
Go to the Topics tab and click on the (+) button to add a new topic. Type in the title and description of your topic. Click “OK” to save the topic. You can add as many topics as you require by simply repeating this step.
Step 5:
Click on the “import” tab to import topics from other sources. The supported formats for imports are JSON, YAML and CSV. Please note that only JSON and YAML support nested imports. CSV only works with single-level imports.
Steps 6:
Click on the “Design” tab to use a custom image as the background in your app. you can use a separate background for portrait and landscape mode. Click “save” when you have chosen the image. You can skip this step if you prefer our default background.
Step 7:
Go back to the features page by selecting “features” from the side menu. Choose push notifications and click on “Add feature” when the “Add a page” window comes up.
Step 8:
In the Page settings section, you can change the feature icon by clicking on the image button to the left of the “Page name” label. Choose your new feature icon, and it will be saved automatically.
Step 9
Select the messages tab and click on the (+) button to add a new push notification.
Type in the title of your notification and the message you want to notify your users with. Click on the highlighted checkbox and select topics. You can insert a cover image for your notifications by clicking on the “insert a cover image button”.
Click on the (>) button to go to the “Users” section. Here you can choose the target device and whether or not you want to send the notification to all your users.
Click the (>) button again to choose when to send your message. The default setting is “now”. Click ok, and in a few seconds, your message will show up on your user’s device. It’s that simple.
Step 10:
Click on the “see changes” button above the virtual device to see what your app would look like on an actual device. To generate an Apk of your app, click on “Download your app” from the side menu, scroll down and click on “Generate Apk.” Choose a subscription plan, and the Apk will be sent to your email address when the build is complete. Here is an example of what your new app would look like.
Congratulations!!! You just linked the Topic and push notification features to create your own unique app.
Check our complete app maker features to see other essential features you could integrate into your app.