Sending messages

Once your users are subscribed to a channel or two, you can send messages to them!

Think of a message as a standard BF Action that is triggered externally. It can even contain data to populate the page, but you don't have to wait for a user to click a button, run a utility hook, or even poll your server for updates on a set interval.

BF Action

Authenticated Channels

The BF action messageSend can be used to send a message to channel or channels. It requires a channel key to be set under options.

Example

• options.channels

// This will send a showAlert action
// to channels "channel1", "channel2" and "channel3"
[
  {
    "action": "messageSend",
    "options": {
      "actions": [
        {
          "action": "showAlert",
          "options": {
            "text": "Hello from Message",
            "title": "Hello World",
            "type": "information"
          }
        }
      ],
      "model": {
        "myModelData": "modelData"
      },
      "app": {
        "myAppData": "appModelData"
      },
      "channels": ["channel1", "channel2", "channel3"]
    }
  }
]

Full action reference:

messageSend

Anonymous channel

The BF action messageSendAnonChannel can be used to send a message to channel or channels. It requires a channels key to be set under options.

Example

• options.channels

// This will send a showAlert action
// to channels "channel1", "channel2" and "channel3"
[
  {
    "action": "messageSendAnonChannel",
    "options": {
      "actions": [
        {
          "action": "showAlert",
          "options": {
            "text": "Hello from Message",
            "title": "Hello World",
            "type": "information"
          }
        }
      ],
      "model": {
        "myModelData": "modelData"
      },
      "app": {
        "myAppData": "appModelData"
      },
      "channels": ["channel1", "channel2", "channel3"]
    }
  }
]

Full action reference:

messageSendAnonChannel

FileMaker Script

The script is available in Helper file and is called API - Send Message. This script accepts an object with four keys message, channels, apiKey and domain.

• message: it accepts an object with:

  • actions: array of BF action objects;

  • model: object with model data;

  • app: object with app model data.

• channels: string of channel name or array of strings;

• apiKey: API key from corresponding app;

• domain: domain to send message to.

Example Parameter

{
  "message": {
    "actions": [
      {
        "action": "showAlert",
        "options": {
          "text": "Alert from FM",
          "title": "Hello World",
          "type": "information"
        }
      }
    ],
    "model": {
      "myModelData": "modelData"
    },
    "app": {
      "myAppData": "appModelData"
    }
  },
  "channels": ["channel1", "channel2"],
  "apiKey": "BFAPI_XXXX-YYYY-XXXX",
  "domain": "my.domain.com"
}

API endpoint /message/sendmessage

API: Send Message

POST https://yourdomain.com/message/sendmessage

Headers

Name	Type	Description
accept	string	application/json
content-type	string	application/json

Request Body

Name	Type	Description
apiKey	string	the API key for the corresponding app
channels	array	array of channel names
message	string	JSON object to be sent
message.actions	array	JSON for an array of BF action objects
message.model	object	JSON object with data to be merged to model data
message.app	array	JSON object with data to be merged to app model data

201 This request will return the data that was sent as body of the request.

Example request body

{
  "message": {
    "actions": [
      {
        "action": "showAlert",
        "options": {
          "text": "Alert from Jhon",
          "title": "Hello World",
          "type": "information"
        }
      }
    ],
    "model": {
      "myModelData": "modelData"
    },
    "app": {
      "myAppData": "appModelData"
    }
  },
  "channels": ["channel1", "channel2"],
  "apiKey": "BFAPI_GENERATED-API-KEY"
}