Sending and Receiving Push notifications on a Progressive Webapp using Pubnub - google-cloud-messaging

Question

I have a Progressive WebApp Chat application and I want to be able to be able to send or receive Push Notifications (on Mobile) and Web (Chrome) Notifications while on Desktop. Right now, I have a web client that is able to receive tickles i.e. data without payloads (payloads will then be fetched through an API call from my server)
I am using Pubnub to talk to GCM and APNS. I have working apps on Web, iOS(native) and Android(native) clients of my project. Right now, I am able to receive Push Notifications on my web app but without the payload.
No where is the server publishing anything. All publishes are done by the clients since its mainly a chat app.
From my Web/Android client, my pubnubPayload is:
var pubnubPayload = {
"text": "no payload!",
"pn_gcm": {
"data": {
"title": "shash",
"babe": "ya"
}
}
}
And then do a normal publish like this:
Pubnub.publish({
channel: myChannel,
message: pubnubPayload,
callback: someFunc
});
So, when I subscribe to a pubnub channel like this:
Pubnub.subscribe({
channel: selectedChannel,
message: function(m){
console.log(m)
},
error: function (error) {
// Handle error here
console.log(JSON.stringify(error));
}
});
I receive the message through Pubnub AND a push notification (but without the payload) on my webapp.
My question is:
How do I receive push notifications on web that have a payload? Is there someway pubnub lets you publish encrypted messages for webs client to be able to read the payload of the GCM push notification without using Pubnub's Access Manager?
Or is using PAM my only option and should fix the no payload issue?

Answer 1

PubNub Access Manager not required for Message Encryption
PubNub Access Manager and message encryption are not directly related and is not required to encrypt your messages, but all applications using PubNub should implement Access Manager to control who can do what on channels by granting permissions (read/write/delete) to auth-keys that your client apps will init PubNub with to use those channels as you intended.
Encrypt using Standard TLS (formerly known as SSL)
To encrypt messages, simply initialize PubNub with TLS enabled (ssl might be the name of the parameter but it is the latest TLS, not the old SSL that was deprecated). This will use standard TLS encryption from your server or client apps to the PubNub network.
Encrypt messages using Cipher Key for AES 256 Encryption
If you wish to have your messages encrypted from your server/client apps to PubNub and all throughout PubNub, just provide a cipher key when you initialize PubNub. The best part about this is that you hold the keys, not PubNub, so no one can read your messages except the holders of those cipher keys.
Custom Encryption using the encrypt/decrypt API
The question asked here includes mobile push notifications which means you can't encrypt the full message if you want the mobile push message to be sent by PubNub to the push services (APNS/FCM) and handled by those services properly. The realtime message will be sent as is - encrypted - to the client subscribers. But you can encrypt the important/confidential parts of the message and leave the parts that need to be ready by PubNub and the push services unencrypted using the encrypt and decrypt APIs. The article, Encryption for APNS, GCM, WMS with PubNub, is a bit old but should provide the required insights.