Set up Amplify Push Notifications

The Push Notifications category allows you to integrate push notifications in your app with Amazon Pinpoint targeting, campaign, and journey management support. You can segment your users, trigger push notifications to your app, and record metrics in Pinpoint when users receive or open notifications. Amazon Pinpoint helps you to create messaging campaigns and journeys targeted to specific user segments or demographics and collect interaction metrics with push notifications.

Prerequisites

An application with Amplify libraries integrated and a minimum target of any of the following:

• iOS 13.0, using Xcode 14.1 or later.
• macOS 10.15, using Xcode 14.1 or later.
• tvOS 13.0, using Xcode 14.3 or later.
• watchOS 9.0, using Xcode 14.3 or later.
• visionOS 1.0, using Xcode 15 or later. (Preview support - see below for more details.)

For a full example, please follow the project setup walkthrough.

Push Notifications are delivered via the Apple Push Notification service (APNs). In order to use APNs, you need to setup credentials (keys or certificates) and export your credentials to a p12 file. See Setting up push notification services for more information.

Set Entitlements

Using Amazon Pinpoint with APNs requires the following capabilities

• Push Notifications
• Background Processing -> Remote Notifications (iOS/tvOS/watchOS)
• App Sandbox -> Outgoing Connections (macOS only)

To add these capabilities:

Application Delegate

APNs requires an application delegate to handle push notifications functionality via delegate methods. If your app does not already have an application delegate, you will need to create one:

1. Create a class that subclasses NSObject and implements the UIApplicationDelegate (iOS/tvOS), WKApplicationDelegate (watchOS), or NSApplicationDelegate (macOS) protocol.

class AppDelegate: NSObject, UIApplicationDelegate {

}

class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {

}

class AppDelegate: NSObject, WKApplicationDelegate {

}

2. Add a property to your main app struct that identifies your application delegate.

@main
struct <YOUR_APP_NAME>App: App {
    @UIApplicationDelegateAdaptor private var appDelegate: AppDelegate
    // ...
}

@main
struct <YOUR_APP_NAME>App: App {
    @NSApplicationDelegateAdaptor private var appDelegate: AppDelegate
    // ...
}

@main
struct <YOUR_APP_NAME>App: App {
    @WKApplicationDelegateAdaptor private var appDelegate: AppDelegate
    // ...
}

Set up backend resources

To use Push Notifications with Amplify, you have the option to either have the Amplify CLI setup resources for you, or you can use an existing Amazon Pinpoint resource in your AWS account.

amplify add notifications

? Choose the push notification channel to enable.
❯ APNS |  Apple Push Notifications
  FCM  | » Firebase Push Notifications
  In-App Messaging
  Email
  SMS

? Provide your pinpoint resource name: › [pinpoint_resource_name]
? Apps need authorization to send analytics events. Do you want to allow guests
 and unauthenticated users to send analytics events? (we recommend you allow this 
 when getting started) (Y/n)

? Choose authentication method used for APNs
> Certificate
Key

🛑 Command failed: openssl pkcs12 -in [path_to_your_cert].p12 -out [output_path].pem -nodes -passin pass:
Error outputting keys and certificates

"notifications": {
    "plugins": {
        "awsPinpointPushNotificationsPlugin": {
            "appId": "[APP ID]",
            "region": "[REGION]"
        }
    }
}

Install Amplify Libraries

Swift Package Manager

1. To install Amplify Libraries in your application, open your project in Xcode and select File > Add Packages....

2. Enter the Amplify Library for Swift GitHub repo URL (https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-swift) into the search bar and click Add Package.

3. Lastly, choose AWSPinpointPushNotificationsPlugin, AWSCognitoAuthPlugin, and Amplify. Then click Add Package.

Initialize Amplify Push Notifications

To initialize the Amplify Push Notifications, you will use the Amplify.addPlugin() method to add the AWSPinpointPushNotificationsPlugin and then call Amplify.configure() to finish configuring Amplify.

Open the main file of the application - AppDelegate.swift or <YOUR_APP_NAME>App.swift depending on the app's life cycle - and add the following import statements at the top of the file:

import Amplify
import AWSCognitoAuthPlugin
import AWSPinpointPushNotificationsPlugin

In the same file, create a function to configure Amplify:

func configureAmplify() {
    do {
        try Amplify.add(plugin: AWSCognitoAuthPlugin())
        try Amplify.add(plugin: AWSPinpointPushNotificationsPlugin())
        try Amplify.configure()
        print("Initialized Amplify");
    } catch {
        print("Could not initialize Amplify: \(error)")
    }
}

Now call the configureAmplify() function in the starting point of your application.

@main
struct <YOUR_APP_NAME>App: App {
    // add a default initializer and configure Amplify
    public init() {
        configureAmplify()
    }
    // ...
}

@UIApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {
    func application(_: UIApplication,
                     didFinishLaunchingWithOptions _: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]?
    ) -> Bool {
        configureAmplify()
        return true
    }
    // ...
}

Upon building and running this application you should see the following in your console window:

Initialized Amplify