Notify.js - A handy wrapper for the Web Notifications API

3 min read.

I recently spent some time getting to grips with the Web Notifications API, which is currently supported in Chrome, Safari 6, and just recently in Firefox. It enables you to create growl-style notifications for web applications, and if you’re on OSX it integrates really nicely with Notification Centre.

I wanted to create something that I could easily reuse in different projects, so I wrote a JavaScript plugin called Notify.js that acts as a simplified wrapper for the API.

Notify.js aims to simplify requesting user permission and associated Web Notification API events, as well as providing a few extra callbacks and convenience methods.

There is a simple online demo here. Installation and setup instructions are as follows:

Installation

Please see the GitHub repo for setup instructions.

Usage

To initialize a web notification create a new Notify instance, passing the message title as well as any other options you wish to use.

var myNotification = new Notify('Yo dawg!', {
    body: 'This is an awesome notification',
    notifyShow: onNotifyShow
});

function onNotifyShow() {
    console.log('notification was shown!');
}

Then show the notification.

myNotification.show();

Required parameters

  • title (string) - notification title

Optional parameters

  • body: (string) - notification message body
  • icon: (string) - path for icon to display in notification
  • tag: (string) - unique identifier to stop duplicate notifications
  • timeout: (integer) - number of seconds to close the notification automatically
  • notifyShow: (function) - callback when notification is shown
  • notifyClose: (function) - callback when notification is closed
  • notifyClick: (function) - callback when notification is clicked
  • notifyError: (function) - callback when notification throws an error
  • permissionGranted: (function) - callback when user has granted permission
  • permissionDenied: (function) - callback when user has denied permission

Static methods

  • Notify.needsPermission() - (returns boolean) check is permission is needed for the user to receive notifications.
  • Notify.requestPermission() - requests permission from the user if needed and handles permission callbacks.
  • Notify.isSupported() - (returns boolean) test for Web Notifications API browser support

A note about Chrome

Unlike other browsers that implement the Web Notification API, Chrome does not permit requesting permission on page load (it must be as a result of user interaction, such as a click event). You can find out more in the Chromium bug for this issue.

Testing

Install Node. Testing relies on the Karma test-runner, which can be installed globally using the following command.

npm install -g karma

In the project root, to perform a single pass of the tests using Firefox run:

npm test

Browser support

Please see the GitHub readme for up to date browser support details.