Alert Notifications don't show up?

[kat-kta]

Noticed that users of my beta 3 test site didn't get any notifications on their alerts. How are they supposed to be set up? What does the number of the "Timeout for Alert desktop notifications" mean? Is it like minutes or something? How are the alert notifications even supposed to appear? Does the server require any specific additional software to support them? I've searched a bit but didn't find much about this. Just a heads up to the devs over here~ Thx for answers~

[Oldiesmann]

Alerts work as part of a system known as background tasks. Each time someone visits your forum, SMF calls a file called "cron.php" (located in your forum directory), which in turn checks the database for any background tasks that need to be run and tries to run them.

The best way to ensure notifications work properly is to set up a cron job to call cron.php (php /path/to/cron.php) every so often (how often depends on many things such as how active your forum is - if your forum isn't very active there's no point in calling it very frequently). That way the file will always get called at a certain interval regardless of whether your forum is active. If you're not sure how to set up a cron job, ask your host for help.

Desktop notifications are an entirely different. This is a feature supported by many web browsers (Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox for sure; not sure what other browsers support it) that shows a notification within the browser for something even if you're not viewing the site that the notification is associated with at the time. The "Timeout for Alert desktop notifications" setting specifies the number of seconds to display the alert before closing it.

The alert notifications will appear at the top left in the box marked "Alerts". The "Desktop Notification" will appear in the bottom right-hand corner of your browser window.

No additional software is needed to support them.

I apologize for the lack of documentation, but SMF 2.1 is still in development and we don't recommend using it on live sites unless you know what you're doing and are willing to live with things that may not work properly yet. Once we get closer to a stable release I'm sure we'll have better documentation available for this feature.

[kat-kta]

Thanks for a quick reply~ Yeah I've read a bit about cron but asking my host = askin myself since I got the server in the basement. It's just that when you click on the "Alerts" button the first time, a prompt pops up and requests permission to send notifications, however, they never appear (even after waiting while keeping an eye open for them). I'll check out cron.php to see what's it all about.
Regarding 2.1, gladly I am running it on a test directory and made it clear to the users willing to take a look at it to report bugs so I can forward them to you guys, and documentation is no biggie since I can ask ya for uncertian things here~ Thanks for ya answers!

[Oldiesmann]

The thing asking to show notifications is the browser prompt to allow the site to show desktop notifications. It's not related to whether SMF shows alerts in the proper area

[sicommnend]

sicommnend commented 34 seconds ago
In order for true desktop level notifications when your not on the site you need a service worker and https. The specification is not complete yet and I already had to do a few rewrites on my code for my service worker.

I wouldn't expect a full implementation in 2.1 on this as I mentioned the service worker specification isn't completed yet and may change breaking stuff like it has done to me in the past.

*edit, code doesn't look good in here, attached file for 2.0.x for a reference.
Service-Worker.php.tar.gz

[colinschoen]

Question answered. Issued closed.