Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Monday, 27 February 2017 22:45 CST

tabletguy

I'd like to request an enhancement to allow multiple push notifications. I.E. able to send a notification to more than one account, and not by email.

Perhaps by having 2 or 3 token fields, or allowing multiple tokens in the existing field? (Not trying to suggest how to implement, just adding something to clarify my request).

In my case, I'd like my site owner to get notifications of backups, especially when I'm traveling or otherwise 'offline' for extended periods. I think there are other use cases, but this is the one I'm interested in.

I did search and read all references to pushbullet on the site before writing. I also tried a Google search for notifying multiple accounts via Pushbullet.

Thanks for your time.
Respectfully,
Stephan

Tuesday, 28 February 2017 01:31 CST

nicholas

There are two ways to implement something like that.

The first and obvious way is how you said, adding multiple tokens. However, this means making n requests every time we need to send a push notification (n = the number of tokens you have entered). First, that would be slow to the point that you might get a time out. Second, we don't know how PushBullet will react to the same message sent from the same IP to multiple tokens. Implementing it is a risk.

The second way is having your own PushBullet application registered with PushBullet and using OAuth2 to subscribe devices. This is massively complicated. You need to register your own PushBullet application and your site must be served in HTTPS. While this is the best approach it'd be very hard for our users.

I guess I have to bite the bullet (no pun intended) and let you use multiple tokens. I'll try implementing that today and include it in the next testing release of Akeeba Backup 5.3.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 28 February 2017 01:45 CST

tabletguy

A "third" way that I thought of is to generate a Pushbullet channel. However, I couldn't tell if there is a way to make the channel "invitation only" or private.

Another technical option might be to use IFTTT or a similar service, but I'm reluctant to add another service in the middle, etc.

I don't think it would matter if push notifications were delayed. However, perhaps the PushBullet API allows multiple IDs on one call, so there wouldn't be a timeout?

Also, I'm actually interested in doing "multiple" notifications on the final Backup Complete message, and just getting the "Backup Started" message myself. Just saying... Don't want to add even more complexity, but I don't know what's easier versus harder in this case so mentioning it.

It was a good pun :)

Tuesday, 28 February 2017 01:58 CST

nicholas

The channel is the same as the second way, I'm afraid. The same with sending push messages to specific devices. They all fall under the same requirement to use OAuth2.

I don't think it would matter if push notifications were delayed.

It's not about delaying the delivery. It's about how much time it takes to communicate to PushBullet. If a single call takes, let's say, 1 second then ten tokens would require 10 seconds to send one push message. That could very easily throw PHP into a timeout error.

However, perhaps the PushBullet API allows multiple IDs on one call, so there wouldn't be a timeout?

Nope.

Also, I'm actually interested in doing "multiple" notifications on the final Backup Complete message, and just getting the "Backup Started" message myself. Just saying... Don't want to add even more complexity, but I don't know what's easier versus harder in this case so mentioning it.

That's infinitely more complex. You are talking about per-message tokens. That would make the setup of push messages impossible for our main target group so I'm afraid I'll have to decline implementing that feature :(

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 28 February 2017 02:40 CST

tabletguy

Your call. Maybe developing an IFTTT recipe would be better, at least until you knew how many people wanted the feature. Of course, having slots for multiple IDs doesn't mean many would use them...

Just thinking out loud.

Wednesday, 01 March 2017 00:31 CST

nicholas

That would be even more complicated. The simplest way is to let you put a comma separated list of PushBullet tokens instead of a single token.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 01 March 2017 02:07 CST

tabletguy

Thanks for the update. I assume you will close this ticket when appropriate?

Friday, 03 March 2017 03:14 CST

nicholas

I will implement this feature on version 5.3.0.b2. It's on the top of my to-do list for Akeeba Engine :)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Sunday, 02 April 2017 17:17 CDT

System Task

system

This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.

Edited by on 2017-04-02 17:17 CDT

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