Nativescript-plugin-firebase: Firebase Messaging iOS Direct Channel Deprecation

[JessicaBunyan]

Hiya,

I, and I'm sure many others received an email from Firebase today regarding the deprecation of the iOS Direct Channel API.

Firebase Messaging iOS Direct Channel has been used for sending data to apps when they are in the foreground and for upstream messages. The Firebase Messaging iOS SDK v7.0 (slated to be released in September 2020) will no longer support the iOS Direct Channel API. Your app will break if you update to the Firebase Messaging iOS SDK v7.0 without migrating off the iOS Direct Channel API.

My question is simply whether this deprecation will affect this plugin and any apps we have built that use it?

Attached: Full email from Firebase

Many Thanks

[EddyVerbruggen]

Anyone reading this willing to investigate?

[felixkrautschuk]

@EddyVerbruggen @JessicaBunyan I also got this email and I think everyone using the cloud messaging functionality of this plugin will get this email, because the following line of code is always executed:

https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/nativescript-plugin-firebase/blob/master/src/messaging/messaging.ios.ts#L256

[felixkrautschuk]

I just commented that line for a short test and the push notifications seem to keep working for us on iOS.

Maybe that's because we are not sending data-only messages or non-apns messages, as stated here

[kanclalg]

We are also sending only downstream messages and I can confirm that it is working just fine when that line is commented. And seems like @felixkrautschuk is right about that specific line triggering these emails. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60498519/firebase-isdirectchannelestablished-is-deprecated-fcm-direct-channel-is-depr
@EddyVerbruggen was there any specific reason why that line is added there?

[flore2003]

The line @felixkrautschuk has mentioned was introduced in https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/nativescript-plugin-firebase/commit/93f4477f2c925ef115b22910826c5251dc35823a witht he upgrade to Firebase iOS SDK 6.2.0, however, it only replaced code that used the deprecated API to connect to the direct channel (https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk/pull/2717), which was originally introduced in https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/nativescript-plugin-firebase/commit/7108cb293d60ca37c32386c72ebf331986ffa9e8

From my preliminary research and looking at the code, it seems like it is connected to the handling of foreground notifications. @felixkrautschuk @kanclalg Can you check if you still receive foreground notifications when the line is removed?

[felixkrautschuk]

@flore2003 thanks for your investigations. I just re-tested cloud messaging for foreground/background/killed state after commenting that line (shouldEstablishDirectChannel = true) and everything is still working as expected on our side.

[shahen94]

any news on this ?

[shahen94]

@EddyVerbruggen PR is open and ready for review.

https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/nativescript-plugin-firebase/pull/1641