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      How to Get WordPress Email Notifications on a DigitalOcean Droplet



      Part of the Series:
      Common WordPress Errors

      This tutorial series explains how to troubleshoot and fix common errors that you may encounter when deploying, maintaining, and updating your WordPress installation.

      Each tutorial in this series includes descriptions of common deployment, maintenance, or update errors, and explores ways to fix and optimize your installation to scale.

      Introduction

      Sending emails and notifications including form submission verifications and password resets from your WordPress site is an essential function. The process of sending automated emails is typically handled by an SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) server, but because SMTP servers are often complex to set up and require constant maintenance and monitoring against spam practices, using an external mail service is often a viable solution to attend to your WordPress site needs.

      In this tutorial, learn how to install and configure the Easy WP SMTP plugin to send emails from your WordPress site using an external mail service such as Gmail.

      Step 1 — Installing the Easy WP SMTP Plugin

      There are a number of ways to set up your WordPress site to send email notifications, and choosing the right one for your WordPress depends on your server configuration and preference. While you could choose to send emails directly from your server, the safest and most secure way to send emails from your WordPress site is through use of an external Email Service Provider (ESP) or SMTP server. Using an ESP or SMTP server ensures compatibility with popular email servers, and keeps emails from your server or Droplet out of spam and junk folders.

      For this tutorial, we’ll use the Easy WP SMTP plugin. You can install this plugin by visiting your WordPress dashboard, then accessing the Plugins item from the left menu. Click the Add New Plugin button, then search for Easy WP SMTP within the Search Plugins… search box.

      After installing the plugin, click on the Activate button to enable it. Then, move on to the next step to configure the Easy WP SMTP plugin to work with your SMTP server for outgoing emails.

      Step 2 — Configuring WordPress Email Settings

      To configure your WordPress SMTP plugin, visit Settings on your dashboard’s left menu, select the Easy WP SMTP menu option, then visit the General Settings tab within to set your preferences for Sender Name, SMTP Port, credentials, and more.

      Wordpress WP SMTP

      For detailed information about the various Easy WP SMTP plugin settings available, visit the main plugin page.

      Step 3 — Testing Email Settings

      To test your settings, navigate to the Easy WP SMTP settings page, towards the bottom of the page to Testing and Debugging Settings. You can send test emails and work to debug errors with your email server by augmenting the fields in this section.

      For more details about testing, visit the plugin download page.

      Conclusion

      In this tutorial, you used the Easy WP SMTP plugin to set up outgoing emails from your WordPress site. To learn about alternative ways to use SMTP servers with DigitalOcean Droplets, visit this tutorial, Using Gmail SMTP Servers to Send Email From WordPress on DigitalOcean.



      Source link

      How To Use Discord Webhooks to Get Notifications for Your Website Status on Ubuntu 18.04


      The author selected the Apache Software Foundation to receive a donation as part of the Write for DOnations program.

      Introduction

      When you have critical websites you’ll want to know when they are experiencing any issues so you can fix them before there’s an impact on your users. One way to receive notifications is to set up alerts through a text-based chat system.

      Discord is a hosted chat system similar to Slack. With Discord, you can set up a free messaging system that lets you communicate with text messages, images, audio, and video. While it offers premium features, you can sign up for free, and it has clients available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

      In this tutorial, you will configure your own Discord server, create a Discord webhook, write a Bash script that will check the status of a list of websites, and test notifications from your server to your Discord channel.

      Prerequisites

      Before you begin this guide you’ll need the following:

      Step 1 — Setting Up Your Discord Webhook

      Once you have opened your Discord account you can create your own private Discord server.

      First, log in to your Discord account in your browser or launch your Discord app and click on the Create a server button.

      Create server or Join server Discord

      Then pick a name for your server and click on the Create a server button.

      Next, you will configure your Discord webhook. The webhooks are unique URLs that you can use to link services together. Discord’s webhooks allow you to automate your messages and send data updates to your Discord text channels.

      In this tutorial, you will send a notification to your webhook when a specific service on your server goes down, and Discord will make sure that you get those messages on your channel.

      To create a webhook you have to first click on your channel and then click on the Edit Channel button right next to your channel’s name.

      Channel settings Discord

      Then click on the Webhooks tab and click the Create Webhook button.

      Create Webhook Button Discord

      After that, pick a name for your webhook, in this tutorial we’ll use Alerts as this is what our Bash script will do—alert us in the case that one of our websites goes down.

      Copy your webhook URL and save it for later. Finally, click the Save button.

      Create webhook Discord

      You now have your Discord account, server, and webhook. You can now move on to create a test file for your script to monitor.

      Step 2 — Creating a Test File (Optional)

      If you don’t have your own website to test already, complete this step to add a test file to check how your monitoring script will work. Make sure to run these commands on your apache-server.

      First, create the test file with the following command:

      • nano /var/www/your_domain/test

      Add some content to your file, so you can check it’s working:

      test

      test
      

      Save and exit the file.

      Now navigate to http://your_domain/test in your browser to make sure you can receive the text in the test file.

      In the next step, you’ll start to build your monitoring script.

      Step 3 — Creating Your Monitoring Script

      Now that you’ve configured your webhook, you’ll go ahead and create your Bash script that will check the response code of your websites. In the event that any of the websites returns a status different from 200 OK, your script will send a request to the Discord webhook so you will receive a notification in your Discord channel.

      Note: You could use any other programming language to build a script like this.

      First SSH in to your monitor-server that you’re using to run your monitoring script.

      Start by creating a file in your home folder. We’ll call the file check_status.sh in this tutorial.

      With your favorite text editor open the file:

      For the program loader to recognize this executable file as a Bash script, add the following line to the top of the file:

      ~/check_status.sh

      #!/bin/bash
      

      All lines starting with a # are a comment. The comments are optional, but having comments in your script will make it easier for other people to understand what the script does:

      ~/check_status.sh

      #!/bin/bash
      
      ##
      # Website status check script
      # Author: Your Name
      # Date: 01/01/2020
      ##
      . . .
      

      Next, specify your Discord webhook as a variable. Add the URL you copied earlier for your webhook:

      ~/check_status.sh

      . . .
      ##
      # Discord webhook
      # Change the 'your_discord_webhook_name' with your actual Discord Webhook
      ##
      url="your_discord_webhook_name"
      . . .
      

      As you’ll possibly use this script to check the status of multiple websites, make a variable called websites_list and store the domain names or IP addresses of the websites that you want to monitor. If you’re using the optional test file in this tutorial, make sure to add /test after your domain name or IP address:

      ~/check_status.sh

      . . .
      ##
      # List of websites to check
      ##
      websites_list="your_domain/test"
      . . .
      

      In the case that you are monitoring more than one website, you can add more domain names or IP addresses to the websites_list variable and use space as a separator:

      ~/check_status.sh

      . . .
      websites_list="your_domain1/test your_domain2 your_domain3"
      . . .
      

      Now you’ll want to loop through the list of websites and check their status. To do so add the following for loop to your file:

      ~/check_status.sh

      . . .
      for website in ${websites_list} ; do
              status_code=$(curl --write-out %{http_code} --silent --output /dev/null -L ${website})
              echo $status_code
      done
      . . .
      

      This for loop will go through each item in the websites_list variable and check the status of the website with the curl command.

      The echo $status_code statement will print out the response status of the curl command. If the website is running as expected the curl command will return a response code 200 OK, meaning that the website is up and running. Otherwise you’ll receive another response code.

      Inside the for loop, add an if statement to check if the response code is 200 or not. If the response code is 200 then this means that the website is running and you wouldn’t need a Discord notification. Add the following conditional block to your file:

      ~/check_status.sh

      . . .
              if [[ "$status_code" -ne 200 ]] ; then
                  # POST request to Discord Webhook with the domain name and the HTTP status code
              else
                  echo "${website} is running!"
              fi
      . . .
      

      If there are any problems with the website then you’ll get a different response code, in this event you’ll want to receive a notification via your Discord webhook.

      To send the notification you can use the curl command to submit a POST request to the Discord webhook URL.

      Add the following curl request inside your if statement:

      ~/check_status.sh

      . . .
              if [[ "$status_code" -ne 200 ]] ; then
                  # POST request to Discord Webhook with the domain name and the HTTP status code
                  curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{"content":"'"${domain} returned: ${status_code}"'"}'  $url
              else
                  echo "${website} is running!"
              fi
      . . .
      

      Now let’s examine the different arguments:

      • -H: Tells curl that you want to add an extra header in your request.
      • "Content-Type: application/json": Defines the data type the webhook should expect (HTTP JSON).
      • -X POST: Specifies that you want to use a POST as the request method.
      • -d: Sends the specified JSON data to the Discord Webhook.

      This will be the final version of your script:

      ~/check_status.sh

      #!/bin/bash
      ##
      # Website status check script
      # Author: Your Name
      # Date: 01/01/2020
      ##
      
      ##
      # Discord webhook
      # Change the 'your_discord_webhook_name' with your actual Discord Webhook
      ##
      url="your_discord_webhook_name"
      
      ##
      # List of websites to check
      # To add more websites just use space as a separator, for example:
      # websites_list="your_domain1 your_domain2 your_domain3"
      ##
      websites_list="your_domain/test your_domain2"
      
      for website in ${websites_list} ; do
              status_code=$(curl --write-out %{http_code} --silent --output /dev/null -L ${website})
      
              if [[ "$status_code" -ne 200 ]] ; then
                  # POST request to Discord Webhook with the domain name and the HTTP status code
                  curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{"content":"'"${domain} : ${status_code}"'"}'  $url
              else
                  echo "${website} is running!"
              fi
      done
      

      The script will loop through this list and check the status for each website.

      Run the script with the following command to make sure that it works as expected:

      After running the script, you will receive the following output in your terminal confirming that your website is running:

      Output

      your_domain1 is running! your_domain2 is running!

      Next, you’ll test your Discord notifications.

      Step 4 — Testing Your Discord Notifications

      Now it’s time to check if your webhooks are working as expected by using the test file.

      On the apache-server run the following command to close down access permissions to this file:

      • sudo chmod 000 /var/www/your_domain/test

      Next, return to your monitor-server and run the script:

      Move to your Discord app and check your alerts, you’ll receive a :403 error. This shows that you do not have the permissions set correctly and are forbidden from viewing the file.

      Now, to test a different error, remove this file entirely from your apache-server:

      • sudo rm /var/www/your_domain/test

      Next, return to your monitor-server and run the script:

      Move to your Discord app and check your alerts, you’ll receive a :404 error. This shows that the file is unavailable.

      If you have Discord installed on your phone you’ll receive alerts there as well.

      You now have a script that alerts you when your websites are experiencing any issues. Let’s next configure the script to run automatically every five minutes.

      Step 5 — Automating the Process

      One of the ways to automate the checks is to create a cron job that will run every 5 minutes or so.

      First, go back to your monitor-server. Then before you can run the script automatically, you need to sort out your file permissions and make sure that the script is executable, otherwise, it will not run. To make the script executable run:

      • chmod u+x ~/check_status.sh

      Run the following to edit your crontab:

      Then add the following to the file:

      */5 * * * * /home/your_user/check_status.sh
      

      Then save the crontab and your script will then execute every 5 minutes.

      Conclusion

      In this article, you configured your own Discord webhook and created a script to notify you in case a specific error occurs on your website. Now you can use your favorite programming language and write a more complex bot.

      To learn more about setting up monitoring infrastructure, check out our Monitoring topic page.

      And, if you are interested in learning more about shell scripting, check out our Introduction to Shell Scripting tutorial series.

      To learn more about Discord webhooks, you can check the official Discord Webhooks documentation.



      Source link

      How To Send Web Push Notifications from Django Applications


      The author selected the Open Internet/Free Speech Fund to receive a donation as part of the Write for DOnations program.

      Introduction

      The web is constantly evolving, and it can now achieve functionalities that were formerly only available on native mobile devices. The introduction of JavaScript service workers gave the web newfound abilities to do things like background syncing, offline caching, and sending push notifications.

      Push notifications allow users to opt-in to receive updates to mobile and web applications. They also enable users to re-engage with existing applications using customized and relevant content.

      In this tutorial, you’ll set up a Django application on Ubuntu 18.04 that sends push notifications whenever there’s an activity that requires the user to visit the application. To create these notifications, you will use the Django-Webpush package and set up and register a service worker to display notifications to the client. The working application with notifications will look like this:

      Web push final

      Prerequisites

      Before you begin this guide you’ll need the following:

      Step 1 — Installing Django-Webpush and Getting Vapid Keys

      Django-Webpush is a package that enables developers to integrate and send web push notifications in Django applications. We’ll use this package to trigger and send push notifications from our application. In this step, you will install Django-Webpush and obtain the Voluntary Application Server Identification (VAPID) keys that are necessary for identifying your server and ensuring the uniqueness of each request.

      Make sure you are in the ~/djangopush project directory that you created in the prerequisites:

      Activate your virtual environment:

      • source my_env/bin/activate

      Upgrade your version of pip to ensure it's up-to-date:

      • pip install --upgrade pip

      Install Django-Webpush:

      • pip install django-webpush

      After installing the package, add it to the list of applications in your settings.py file. First open settings.py:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      Add webpush to the list of INSTALLED_APPS:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      ...
      
      INSTALLED_APPS = [
          ...,
          'webpush',
      ]
      ...
      

      Save the file and exit your editor.

      Run migrations on the application to apply the changes you've made to your database schema:

      The output will look like this, indicating a successful migration:

      Output

      Operations to perform: Apply all migrations: admin, auth, contenttypes, sessions, webpush Running migrations: Applying webpush.0001_initial... OK

      The next step in setting up web push notifications is getting VAPID keys. These keys identify the application server and can be used to reduce the secrecy for push subscription URLs, since they restrict subscriptions to a specific server.

      To obtain VAPID keys, navigate to the wep-push-codelab web application. Here, you'll be given automatically generated keys. Copy the private and public keys.

      Next, create a new entry in settings.py for your VAPID information. First, open the file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      Next, add a new directive called WEBPUSH_SETTINGS with your VAPID public and private keys and your email below AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      ...
      
      AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS = [
          ...
      ]
      
      WEBPUSH_SETTINGS = {
         "VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY": "your_vapid_public_key",
         "VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY": "your_vapid_private_key",
         "VAPID_ADMIN_EMAIL": "[email protected]"
      }
      
      # Internationalization
      # https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/topics/i18n/
      
      ...
      

      Don't forget to replace the placeholder values your_vapid_public_key, your_vapid_private_key, and [email protected] with your own information. Your email address is how you will be notified if the push server experiences any issues.

      Next, we'll set up views that will display the application's home page and trigger push notifications to subscribed users.

      Step 2 — Setting Up Views

      In this step, we'll setup a basic home view with the HttpResponse response object for our home page, along with a send_push view. Views are functions that return response objects from web requests. The send_push view will use the Django-Webpush library to send push notifications that contain the data entered by a user on the home page.

      Navigate to the ~/djangopush/djangopush folder:

      • cd ~/djangopush/djangopush

      Running ls inside the folder will show you the project's main files:

      Output

      /__init__.py /settings.py /urls.py /wsgi.py

      The files in this folder are auto-generated by the django-admin utility that you used to create your project in the prerequisites. The settings.py file contains project-wide configurations like installed applications and the static root folder. The urls.py file contains the URL configurations for the project. This is where you will set up routes to match your created views.

      Create a new file inside the ~/djangopush/djangopush directory called views.py, which will contain the views for your project:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/views.py

      The first view we'll make is the home view, which will display the home page where users can send push notifications. Add the following code to the file:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/views.py

      from django.http.response import HttpResponse
      from django.views.decorators.http import require_GET
      
      @require_GET
      def home(request):
          return HttpResponse('<h1>Home Page<h1>')
      

      The home view is decorated by the require_GET decorator, which restricts the view to GET requests only. A view typically returns a response for every request made to it. This view returns a simple HTML tag as a response.

      The next view we'll create is send_push, which will handle sent push notifications using the django-webpush package. It will be restricted to POST requests only and will be exempted from Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection. Doing this will allow you to test the view using Postman or any other RESTful service. In production, however, you should remove this decorator to avoid leaving your views vulnerable to CSRF.

      To create the send_push view, first add the following imports to enable JSON responses and access the send_user_notification function in the webpush library:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/views.py

      from django.http.response import JsonResponse, HttpResponse
      from django.views.decorators.http import require_GET, require_POST
      from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404
      from django.contrib.auth.models import User
      from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt
      from webpush import send_user_notification
      import json
      

      Next, add the require_POST decorator, which will use the request body sent by the user to create and trigger a push notification:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/views.py

      @require_GET
      def home(request):
          ...
      
      
      @require_POST
      @csrf_exempt
      def send_push(request):
          try:
              body = request.body
              data = json.loads(body)
      
              if 'head' not in data or 'body' not in data or 'id' not in data:
                  return JsonResponse(status=400, data={"message": "Invalid data format"})
      
              user_id = data['id']
              user = get_object_or_404(User, pk=user_id)
              payload = {'head': data['head'], 'body': data['body']}
              send_user_notification(user=user, payload=payload, ttl=1000)
      
              return JsonResponse(status=200, data={"message": "Web push successful"})
          except TypeError:
              return JsonResponse(status=500, data={"message": "An error occurred"})
      

      We are using two decorators for the send_push view: the require_POST decorator, which restricts the view to POST requests only, and the csrf_exempt decorator, which exempts the view from CSRF protection.

      This view expects POST data and does the following: it gets the body of the request and, using the json package, deserializes the JSON document to a Python object using json.loads. json.loads takes a structured JSON document and converts it to a Python object.

      The view expects the request body object to have three properties:

      • head: The title of the push notification.
      • body: The body of the notification.
      • id: The id of the request user.

      If any of the required properties are missing, the view will return a JSONResponse with a 404 "Not Found" status. If the user with the given primary key exists, the view will return the user with the matching primary key using the get_object_or_404 function from the django.shortcuts library. If the user doesn't exist, the function will return a 404 error.

      The view also makes use of the send_user_notification function from the webpush library. This function takes three parameters:

      • User: The recipient of the push notification.
      • payload: The notification information, which includes the notification head and body.
      • ttl: The maximum time in seconds that the notification should be stored if the user is offline.

      If no errors occur, the view returns a JSONResponse with a 200 "Success" status and a data object. If a KeyError occurs, the view will return a 500 "Internal Server Error" status. A KeyError occurs when the requested key of an object doesn't exist.

      In the next step, we'll create corresponding URL routes to match the views we've created.

      Step 3 — Mapping URLs to Views

      Django makes it possible to create URLs that connect to views with a Python module called a URLconf. This module maps URL path expressions to Python functions (your views). Usually, a URL configuration file is auto-generated when you create a project. In this step, you will update this file to include new routes for the views you created in the previous step, along with the URLs for the django-webpush app, which will provide endpoints to subscribe users to push notifications.

      For more information about views, please see How To Create Django Views.

      Open urls.py:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/urls.py

      The file will look like this:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/urls.py

      
      """untitled URL Configuration
      
      The `urlpatterns` list routes URLs to views. For more information please see:
          https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.1/topics/http/urls/
      Examples:
      Function views
          1. Add an import:  from my_app import views
          2. Add a URL to urlpatterns:  path('', views.home, name='home')
      Class-based views
          1. Add an import:  from other_app.views import Home
          2. Add a URL to urlpatterns:  path('', Home.as_view(), name='home')
      Including another URLconf
          1. Import the include() function: from django.urls import include, path
          2. Add a URL to urlpatterns:  path('blog/', include('blog.urls'))
      """
      from django.contrib import admin
      from django.urls import path
      
      urlpatterns = [
          path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
      ]
      

      The next step is to map the views you've created to URLs. First, add the include import to ensure that all of the routes for the Django-Webpush library will be added to your project:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/urls.py

      
      """webpushdjango URL Configuration
      ...
      """
      from django.contrib import admin
      from django.urls import path, include
      

      Next, import the views you created in the last step and update the urlpatterns list to map your views:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/urls.py

      
      """webpushdjango URL Configuration
      ...
      """
      from django.contrib import admin
      from django.urls import path, include
      
      from .views import home, send_push
      
      urlpatterns = [
                        path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
                        path('', home),
                        path('send_push', send_push),
                        path('webpush/', include('webpush.urls')),
                    ]
      

      Here, the urlpatterns list registers the URLs for the django-webpush package and maps your views to the URLs /send_push and /home.

      Let's test the /home view to be sure that it's working as intended. Make sure you're in the root directory of the project:

      Start your server by running the following command:

      • python manage.py runserver your_server_ip:8000

      Navigate to http://your_server_ip:8000. You should see the following home page:

      Initial Home Page view

      At this point, you can kill the server with CTRL+C, and we will move on to creating templates and rendering them in our views using the render function.

      Step 4 — Creating Templates

      Django’s template engine allows you to define the user-facing layers of your application with templates, which are similar to HTML files. In this step, you will create and render a template for the home view.

      Create a folder called templates in your project's root directory:

      • mkdir ~/djangopush/templates

      If you run ls in the root folder of your project at this point, the output will look like this:

      Output

      /djangopush /templates db.sqlite3 manage.py /my_env

      Create a file called home.html in the templates folder:

      • nano ~/djangopush/templates/home.html

      Add the following code to the file to create a form where users can enter information to create push notifications:

      {% load static %}
      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <html lang="en">
      <head>
          <meta charset="UTF-8">
          <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
          <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
          <meta name="vapid-key" content="{{ vapid_key }}">
          {% if user.id %}
              <meta name="user_id" content="{{ user.id }}">
          {% endif %}
          <title>Web Push</title>
          <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans:400,700" rel="stylesheet">
      </head>
      
      <body>
      <div>
          <form id="send-push__form">
              <h3 class="header">Send a push notification</h3>
              <p class="error"></p>
              <input type="text" name="head" placeholder="Header: Your favorite airline 😍">
              <textarea name="body" id="" cols="30" rows="10" placeholder="Body: Your flight has been cancelled 😱😱😱"></textarea>
              <button>Send Me</button>
          </form>
      </div>
      </body>
      </html>
      

      The body of the file includes a form with two fields: an input element will hold the head/title of the notification and a textarea element will hold the notification body.

      In the head section of the file, there are two meta tags that will hold the VAPID public key and the user's id. These two variables are required to register a user and send them push notifications. The user's id is required here because you'll be sending AJAX requests to the server and the id will be used to identify the user. If the current user is a registered user, then the template will create a meta tag with their id as the content.

      The next step is to tell Django where to find your templates. To do this, you will edit settings.py and update the TEMPLATES list.

      Open the settings.py file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      Add the following to the DIRS list to specify the path to the templates directory:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      ...
      TEMPLATES = [
          {
              'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
              'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')],
              'APP_DIRS': True,
              'OPTIONS': {
                  'context_processors': [
                      ...
                  ],
              },
          },
      ]
      ...
      

      Next, in your views.py file, update the home view to render the home.html template. Open the file:

      • nano ~/djangpush/djangopush/views.py

      First, add some additional imports, including the settings configuration, which contains all of the project's settings from the settings.py file, and the render function from django.shortcuts:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/views.py

      ...
      from django.shortcuts import render, get_object_or_404
      ...
      import json
      from django.conf import settings
      
      ...
      

      Next, remove the initial code you added to the home view and add the following, which specifies how the template you just created will be rendered:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/views.py

      ...
      
      @require_GET
      def home(request):
         webpush_settings = getattr(settings, 'WEBPUSH_SETTINGS', {})
         vapid_key = webpush_settings.get('VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY')
         user = request.user
         return render(request, 'home.html', {user: user, 'vapid_key': vapid_key})
      

      The code assigns the following variables:

      • webpush_settings: This is assigned the value of the WEBPUSH_SETTINGS attribute from the settings configuration.
      • vapid_key: This gets the VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY value from the webpush_settings object to send to the client. This public key is checked against the private key to ensure that the client with the public key is permitted to receive push messages from the server.
      • user: This variable comes from the incoming request. Whenever a user makes a request to the server, the details for that user are stored in the user field.

      The render function will return an HTML file and a context object containing the current user and the server's vapid public key. It takes three parameters here: the request, the template to be rendered, and the object that contains the variables that will be used in the template.

      With our template created and the home view updated, we can move on to configuring Django to serve our static files.

      Step 5 — Serving Static Files

      Web applications include CSS, JavaScript, and other image files that Django refers to as “static files”. Django allows you to collect all of the static files from each application in your project into a single location from which they are served. This solution is called django.contrib.staticfiles. In this step, we'll update our settings to tell Django where our static files will be stored.

      Open settings.py:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      In settings.py, first ensure that the STATIC_URL has been defined:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      ...
      STATIC_URL = '/static/'
      

      Next, add a list of directories called STATICFILES_DIRS where Django will look for static files:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      ...
      STATIC_URL = '/static/'
      STATICFILES_DIRS = [
          os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static"),
      ]
      

      You can now add the STATIC_URL to the list of paths defined in your urls.py file.

      Open the file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/urls.py

      Add the following code, which will import the static url configuration and update the urlpatterns list. The helper function here uses the STATIC_URL and STATIC_ROOT properties we provided in the settings.py file to serve the project's static files:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/urls.py

      
      ...
      from django.conf import settings
      from django.conf.urls.static import static
      
      urlpatterns = [
          ...
      ]  + static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)
      

      With our static files settings configured, we can move on to styling the application's home page.

      Step 6 — Styling the Home Page

      After setting up your application to serve static files, you can create an external stylesheet and link it to the home.html file to style the home page. All of your static files will be stored in a static directory in the root folder of your project.

      Create a static folder and a css folder within the static folder:

      • mkdir -p ~/djangopush/static/css

      Open a css file called styles.css inside the css folder:

      • nano ~/djangopush/static/css/styles.css

      Add the following styles for the home page:

      ~/djangopush/static/css/styles.css

      
      body {
          height: 100%;
          background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);
          font-family: 'PT Sans', sans-serif;
      }
      
      div {
          height: 100%;
          display: flex;
          align-items: center;
          justify-content: center;
      }
      
      form {
          display: flex;
          flex-direction: column;
          align-items: center;
          justify-content: center;
          width: 35%;
          margin: 10% auto;
      }
      
      form > h3 {
          font-size: 17px;
          font-weight: bold;
          margin: 15px 0;
          color: orangered;
          text-transform: uppercase;
      }
      
      form > .error {
          margin: 0;
          font-size: 15px;
          font-weight: normal;
          color: orange;
          opacity: 0.7;
      }
      
      form > input, form > textarea {
          border: 3px solid orangered;
          box-shadow: unset;
          padding: 13px 12px;
          margin: 12px auto;
          width: 80%;
          font-size: 13px;
          font-weight: 500;
      }
      
      form > input:focus, form > textarea:focus {
          border: 3px solid orangered;
          box-shadow: 0 2px 3px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2);
          outline: unset;
      }
      
      form > button {
          justify-self: center;
          padding: 12px 25px;
          border-radius: 0;
          text-transform: uppercase;
          font-weight: 600;
          background: orangered;
          color: white;
          border: none;
          font-size: 14px;
          letter-spacing: -0.1px;
          cursor: pointer;
      }
      
      form > button:disabled {
          background: dimgrey;
          cursor: not-allowed;
      }
      

      With the stylesheet created, you can link it to the home.html file using static template tags. Open the home.html file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/templates/home.html

      Update the head section to include a link to the external stylesheet:

      ~/djangopush/templates/home.html

      
      {% load static %}
      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <html lang="en">
      
      <head>
          ...
          <link href="http://www.digitalocean.com/{% static"/css/styles.css' %}" rel="stylesheet">
      </head>
      <body>
          ...
      </body>
      </html>
      

      Make sure that you are in your main project directory and start your server again to inspect your work:

      • cd ~/djangopush
      • python manage.py runserver your_server_ip:8000

      When you visit http://your_server_ip:8000, it should look like this:

      Home page view
      Again, you can kill the server with CTRL+C.

      Now that you have successfully created the home.html page and styled it, you can subscribe users to push notifications whenever they visit the home page.

      Step 7 — Registering a Service Worker and Subscribing Users to Push Notifications

      Web push notifications can notify users when there are updates to applications they are subscribed to or prompt them to re-engage with applications they have used in the past. They rely on two technologies, the push API and the notifications API. Both technologies rely on the presence of a service worker.

      A push is invoked when the server provides information to the service worker and the service worker uses the notifications API to display this information.

      We'll subscribe our users to the push and then we'll send the information from the subscription to the server to register them.

      In the static directory, create a folder called js:

      • mkdir ~/djangopush/static/js

      Create a file called registerSw.js:

      • nano ~/djangopush/static/js/registerSw.js

      Add the following code, which checks if service workers are supported on the user's browser before attempting to register a service worker:

      ~/djangopush/static/js/registerSw.js

      
      const registerSw = async () => {
          if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
              const reg = await navigator.serviceWorker.register('sw.js');
              initialiseState(reg)
      
          } else {
              showNotAllowed("You can't send push notifications ☹️😢")
          }
      };
      

      First, the registerSw function checks if the browser supports service workers before registering them. After registration, it calls the initializeState function with the registration data. If service workers are not supported in the browser, it calls the showNotAllowed function.

      Next, add the following code below the registerSw function to check if a user is eligible to receive push notifications before attempting to subscribe them:

      ~/djangopush/static/js/registerSw.js

      
      ...
      
      const initialiseState = (reg) => {
          if (!reg.showNotification) {
              showNotAllowed('Showing notifications isn't supported ☹️😢');
              return
          }
          if (Notification.permission === 'denied') {
              showNotAllowed('You prevented us from showing notifications ☹️🤔');
              return
          }
          if (!'PushManager' in window) {
              showNotAllowed("Push isn't allowed in your browser 🤔");
              return
          }
          subscribe(reg);
      }
      
      const showNotAllowed = (message) => {
          const button = document.querySelector('form>button');
          button.innerHTML = `${message}`;
          button.setAttribute('disabled', 'true');
      };
      

      The initializeState function checks the following:

      • Whether or not the user has enabled notifications, using the value of reg.showNotification.
      • Whether or not the user has granted the application permission to display notifications.
      • Whether or not the browser supports the PushManager API.
        If any of these checks fail, the showNotAllowed function is called and the subscription is aborted.

      The showNotAllowed function displays a message on the button and disables it if a user is ineligible to receive notifications. It also displays appropriate messages if a user has restricted the application from displaying notifications or if the browser doesn't support push notifications.

      Once we ensure that a user is eligible to receive push notifications, the next step is to subscribe them using pushManager. Add the following code below the showNotAllowed function:

      ~/djangopush/static/js/registerSw.js

      
      ...
      
      function urlB64ToUint8Array(base64String) {
          const padding = '='.repeat((4 - base64String.length % 4) % 4);
          const base64 = (base64String + padding)
              .replace(/-/g, '+')
              .replace(/_/g, '/');
      
          const rawData = window.atob(base64);
          const outputArray = new Uint8Array(rawData.length);
          const outputData = outputArray.map((output, index) => rawData.charCodeAt(index));
      
          return outputData;
      }
      
      const subscribe = async (reg) => {
          const subscription = await reg.pushManager.getSubscription();
          if (subscription) {
              sendSubData(subscription);
              return;
          }
      
          const vapidMeta = document.querySelector('meta[name="vapid-key"]');
          const key = vapidMeta.content;
          const options = {
              userVisibleOnly: true,
              // if key exists, create applicationServerKey property
              ...(key && {applicationServerKey: urlB64ToUint8Array(key)})
          };
      
          const sub = await reg.pushManager.subscribe(options);
          sendSubData(sub)
      };
      

      Calling the pushManager.getSubscription function returns the data for an active subscription. When an active subscription exists, the sendSubData function is called with the subscription info passed in as a parameter.

      When no active subscription exists, the VAPID public key, which is Base64 URL-safe encoded, is converted to a Uint8Array using the urlB64ToUint8Array function. pushManager.subscribe is then called with the VAPID public key and the userVisible value as options. You can read more about the available options here.

      After successfully subscribing a user, the next step is to send the subscription data to the server. The data will be sent to the webpush/save_information endpoint provided by the django-webpush package. Add the following code below the subscribe function:

      ~/djangopush/static/js/registerSw.js

      
      ...
      
      const sendSubData = async (subscription) => {
          const browser = navigator.userAgent.match(/(firefox|msie|chrome|safari|trident)/ig)[0].toLowerCase();
          const data = {
              status_type: 'subscribe',
              subscription: subscription.toJSON(),
              browser: browser,
          };
      
          const res = await fetch('/webpush/save_information', {
              method: 'POST',
              body: JSON.stringify(data),
              headers: {
                  'content-type': 'application/json'
              },
              credentials: "include"
          });
      
          handleResponse(res);
      };
      
      const handleResponse = (res) => {
          console.log(res.status);
      };
      
      registerSw();
      

      The save_information endpoint requires information about the status of the subscription (subscribe and unsubscribe), the subscription data, and the browser. Finally, we call the registerSw() function to begin the process of subscribing the user.

      The completed file looks like this:

      ~/djangopush/static/js/registerSw.js

      
      const registerSw = async () => {
          if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
              const reg = await navigator.serviceWorker.register('sw.js');
              initialiseState(reg)
      
          } else {
              showNotAllowed("You can't send push notifications ☹️😢")
          }
      };
      
      const initialiseState = (reg) => {
          if (!reg.showNotification) {
              showNotAllowed('Showing notifications isn't supported ☹️😢');
              return
          }
          if (Notification.permission === 'denied') {
              showNotAllowed('You prevented us from showing notifications ☹️🤔');
              return
          }
          if (!'PushManager' in window) {
              showNotAllowed("Push isn't allowed in your browser 🤔");
              return
          }
          subscribe(reg);
      }
      
      const showNotAllowed = (message) => {
          const button = document.querySelector('form>button');
          button.innerHTML = `${message}`;
          button.setAttribute('disabled', 'true');
      };
      
      function urlB64ToUint8Array(base64String) {
          const padding = '='.repeat((4 - base64String.length % 4) % 4);
          const base64 = (base64String + padding)
              .replace(/-/g, '+')
              .replace(/_/g, '/');
      
          const rawData = window.atob(base64);
          const outputArray = new Uint8Array(rawData.length);
          const outputData = outputArray.map((output, index) => rawData.charCodeAt(index));
      
          return outputData;
      }
      
      const subscribe = async (reg) => {
          const subscription = await reg.pushManager.getSubscription();
          if (subscription) {
              sendSubData(subscription);
              return;
          }
      
          const vapidMeta = document.querySelector('meta[name="vapid-key"]');
          const key = vapidMeta.content;
          const options = {
              userVisibleOnly: true,
              // if key exists, create applicationServerKey property
              ...(key && {applicationServerKey: urlB64ToUint8Array(key)})
          };
      
          const sub = await reg.pushManager.subscribe(options);
          sendSubData(sub)
      };
      
      const sendSubData = async (subscription) => {
          const browser = navigator.userAgent.match(/(firefox|msie|chrome|safari|trident)/ig)[0].toLowerCase();
          const data = {
              status_type: 'subscribe',
              subscription: subscription.toJSON(),
              browser: browser,
          };
      
          const res = await fetch('/webpush/save_information', {
              method: 'POST',
              body: JSON.stringify(data),
              headers: {
                  'content-type': 'application/json'
              },
              credentials: "include"
          });
      
          handleResponse(res);
      };
      
      const handleResponse = (res) => {
          console.log(res.status);
      };
      
      registerSw();
      

      Next, add a script tag for the registerSw.js file in home.html. Open the file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/templates/home.html

      Add the script tag before the closing tag of the body element:

      ~/djangopush/templates/home.html

      
      {% load static %}
      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <html lang="en">
      
      <head>
         ...
      </head>
      <body>
         ...
         <script src="https://www.digitalocean.com/{% static"/js/registerSw.js' %}"></script>
      </body>
      </html>
      

      Because a service worker doesn't yet exist, if you left your application running or tried to start it again, you would see an error message. Let's fix this by creating a service worker.

      Step 8 — Creating a Service Worker

      To display a push notification, you'll need an active service worker installed on your application's home page. We'll create a service worker that listens for push events and displays the messages when ready.

      Because we want the scope of the service worker to be the entire domain, we will need to install it in the application's root. You can read more about the process in this article outlining how to register a service worker. Our approach will be to create a sw.js file in the templates folder, which we will then register as a view.

      Create the file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/templates/sw.js

      Add the following code, which tells the service worker to listen for push events:

      ~/djangopush/templates/sw.js

      
      // Register event listener for the 'push' event.
      self.addEventListener('push', function (event) {
          // Retrieve the textual payload from event.data (a PushMessageData object).
          // Other formats are supported (ArrayBuffer, Blob, JSON), check out the documentation
          // on https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/PushMessageData.
          const eventInfo = event.data.text();
          const data = JSON.parse(eventInfo);
          const head = data.head || 'New Notification 🕺🕺';
          const body = data.body || 'This is default content. Your notification didn't have one 🙄🙄';
      
          // Keep the service worker alive until the notification is created.
          event.waitUntil(
              self.registration.showNotification(head, {
                  body: body,
                  icon: 'https://i.imgur.com/MZM3K5w.png'
              })
          );
      });
      

      The service worker listens for a push event. In the callback function, the event data is converted to text. We use default title and body strings if the event data doesn't have them. The showNotification function takes the notification title, the header of the notification to be displayed, and an options object as parameters. The options object contains several properties to configure the visual options of a notification.

      For your service worker to work for the entirety of your domain, you will need to install it in the root of the application. We'll use TemplateView to allow the service worker access to the whole domain.

      Open the urls.py file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/urls.py

      Add a new import statement and path in the urlpatterns list to create a class-based view:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/urls.py

      ...
      from django.views.generic import TemplateView
      
      urlpatterns = [
                        ...,
                        path('sw.js', TemplateView.as_view(template_name='sw.js', content_type='application/x-javascript'))
                    ] + static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)
      

      Class-based views like TemplateView allow you to create flexible, reusable views. In this case, the TemplateView.as_view method creates a path for the service worker by passing the recently created service worker as a template and application/x-javascript as the content_type of the template.

      You have now created a service worker and registered it as a route. Next, you'll set up the form on the home page to send push notifications.

      Step 9 — Sending Push Notifications

      Using the form on the home page, users should be able to send push notifications while your server is running. You can also send push notifications using any RESTful service like Postman. When the user sends push notifications from the form on the home page, the data will include a head and body, as well as the id of the receiving user. The data should be structured in the following manner:

      {
          head: "Title of the notification",
          body: "Notification body",
          id: "User's id"
      }
      

      To listen for the submit event of the form and send the data entered by the user to the server, we will create a file called site.js in the ~/djangopush/static/js directory.

      Open the file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/static/js/site.js

      First, add a submit event listener to the form that will enable you to get the values of the form inputs and the user id stored in the meta tag of your template:

      ~/djangopush/static/js/site.js

      
      const pushForm = document.getElementById('send-push__form');
      const errorMsg = document.querySelector('.error');
      
      pushForm.addEventListener('submit', async function (e) {
          e.preventDefault();
          const input = this[0];
          const textarea = this[1];
          const button = this[2];
          errorMsg.innerText = '';
      
          const head = input.value;
          const body = textarea.value;
          const meta = document.querySelector('meta[name="user_id"]');
          const id = meta ? meta.content : null;
          ...
          // TODO: make an AJAX request to send notification
      });
      

      The pushForm function gets the input, textarea, and button inside the form. It also gets the information from the meta tag, including the name attribute user_id and the user's id stored in the content attribute of the tag. With this information, it can send a POST request to the /send_push endpoint on the server.

      To send requests to the server, we'll use the native Fetch API. We're using Fetch here because it is supported by most browsers and doesn't require external libraries to function. Below the code you've added, update the pushForm function to include the code for sending AJAX requests:

      ~/djangopush/static/js/site.js

      const pushForm = document.getElementById('send-push__form');
      const errorMsg = document.querySelector('.error');
      
      pushForm.addEventListener('submit', async function (e) {
           ...
          const id = meta ? meta.content : null;
      
           if (head && body && id) {
              button.innerText = 'Sending...';
              button.disabled = true;
      
              const res = await fetch('/send_push', {
                  method: 'POST',
                  body: JSON.stringify({head, body, id}),
                  headers: {
                      'content-type': 'application/json'
                  }
              });
              if (res.status === 200) {
                  button.innerText = 'Send another 😃!';
                  button.disabled = false;
                  input.value = '';
                  textarea.value = '';
              } else {
                  errorMsg.innerText = res.message;
                  button.innerText = 'Something broke 😢..  Try again?';
                  button.disabled = false;
              }
          }
          else {
              let error;
              if (!head || !body){
                  error = 'Please ensure you complete the form 🙏🏾'
              }
              else if (!id){
                  error = "Are you sure you're logged in? 🤔. Make sure! 👍🏼"
              }
              errorMsg.innerText = error;
          }
      });
      

      If the three required parameters head, body, and id are present, we send the request and disable the submit button temporarily.

      The completed file looks like this:

      ~/djangopush/static/js/site.js

      const pushForm = document.getElementById('send-push__form');
      const errorMsg = document.querySelector('.error');
      
      pushForm.addEventListener('submit', async function (e) {
          e.preventDefault();
          const input = this[0];
          const textarea = this[1];
          const button = this[2];
          errorMsg.innerText = '';
      
          const head = input.value;
          const body = textarea.value;
          const meta = document.querySelector('meta[name="user_id"]');
          const id = meta ? meta.content : null;
      
          if (head && body && id) {
              button.innerText = 'Sending...';
              button.disabled = true;
      
              const res = await fetch('/send_push', {
                  method: 'POST',
                  body: JSON.stringify({head, body, id}),
                  headers: {
                      'content-type': 'application/json'
                  }
              });
              if (res.status === 200) {
                  button.innerText = 'Send another 😃!';
                  button.disabled = false;
                  input.value = '';
                  textarea.value = '';
              } else {
                  errorMsg.innerText = res.message;
                  button.innerText = 'Something broke 😢..  Try again?';
                  button.disabled = false;
              }
          }
          else {
              let error;
              if (!head || !body){
                  error = 'Please ensure you complete the form 🙏🏾'
              }
              else if (!id){
                  error = "Are you sure you're logged in? 🤔. Make sure! 👍🏼"
              }
              errorMsg.innerText = error;
          }    
      });
      

      Finally, add the site.js file to home.html:

      • nano ~/djangopush/templates/home.html

      Add the script tag:

      ~/djangopush/templates/home.html

      
      {% load static %}
      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <html lang="en">
      
      <head>
         ...
      </head>
      <body>
         ...
         <script src="https://www.digitalocean.com/{% static"/js/site.js' %}"></script>
      </body>
      </html>
      

      At this point, if you left your application running or tried to start it again, you would see an error, since service workers can only function in secure domains or on localhost. In the next step we'll use ngrok to create a secure tunnel to our web server.

      Step 10 — Creating a Secure Tunnel to Test the Application

      Service workers require secure connections to function on any site except localhost since they can allow connections to be hijacked and responses to be filtered and fabricated. For this reason, we'll create a secure tunnel for our server with ngrok.

      Open a second terminal window and ensure you're in your home directory:

      If you started with a clean 18.04 server in the prerequisites, then you will need to install unzip:

      • sudo apt update && sudo apt install unzip

      Download ngrok:

      • wget https://bin.equinox.io/c/4VmDzA7iaHb/ngrok-stable-linux-amd64.zip
      • unzip ngrok-stable-linux-amd64.zip

      Move ngrok to /usr/local/bin, so that you will have access to the ngrok command from the terminal:

      • sudo mv ngrok /usr/local/bin

      In your first terminal window, make sure that you are in your project directory and start your server:

      • cd ~/djangopush
      • python manage.py runserver your_server_ip:8000

      You will need to do this before creating a secure tunnel for your application.

      In your second terminal window, navigate to your project folder, and activate your virtual environment:

      • cd ~/djangopush
      • source my_env/bin/activate

      Create the secure tunnel to your application:

      • ngrok http your_server_ip:8000

      You will see the following output, which includes information about your secure ngrok URL:

      Output

      ngrok by @inconshreveable (Ctrl+C to quit) Session Status online Session Expires 7 hours, 59 minutes Version 2.2.8 Region United States (us) Web Interface http://127.0.0.1:4040 Forwarding http://ngrok_secure_url -> 203.0.113.0:8000 Forwarding https://ngrok_secure_url -> 203.0.113.0:8000 Connections ttl opn rt1 rt5 p50 p90 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

      Copy the ngrok_secure_url from the console output. You will need to add it to the list of ALLOWED_HOSTS in your settings.py file.

      Open another terminal window, navigate to your project folder, and activate your virtual environment:

      • cd ~/djangopush
      • source my_env/bin/activate

      Open the settings.py file:

      • nano ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      Update the list of ALLOWED_HOSTS with the ngrok secure tunnel:

      ~/djangopush/djangopush/settings.py

      ...
      
      ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['your_server_ip', 'ngrok_secure_url']
      ...
      
      

      Navigate to the secure admin page to log in: https://ngrok_secure_url/admin/. You will see a screen that looks like this:

      ngrok admin login

      Enter your Django admin user information on this screen. This should be the same information you entered when you logged into the admin interface in the prerequisite steps. You are now ready to send push notifications.

      Visit https://ngrok_secure_url in your browser. You will see a prompt asking for permission to display notifications. Click the Allow button to let your browser display push notifications:

      push notifications request

      Submitting a filled form will display a notification similar to this:

      screenshot of notification

      Note: Be sure that your server is running before attempting to send notifications.

      If you received notifications then your application is working as expected.

      You have created a web application that triggers push notifications on the server and, with the help of service workers, receives and displays notifications. You also went through the steps of obtaining the VAPID keys that are required to send push notifications from an application server.

      Conclusion

      In this tutorial, you've learned how to subscribe users to push notifications, install service workers, and display push notifications using the notifications API.

      You can go even further by configuring the notifications to open specific areas of your application when clicked. The source code for this tutorial can be found here.



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