lightpush

A lightweight push notification server for websites.

Overview

When working with most traditional web frameworks (e.g. Django), adding real-time features to websites presents a big challenge. Some developers solve this problem by installing an auxiliary server (e.g. Tornado, or node.js+socket.io) to handle real-time part of the website. For something as simple as sending push notifications to the client, this solution is an overkill.

lightpush solves this problem with a simpler approach. Just run lightpush server and make clients connect to it. Then you can send those clients notifications by making a simple POST request to lightpush.

Installation

1. Download lightpush.py to the server machine.
2. run python lightpush.py

As simple as that.

This will start the server in its default settings. You can customize it by passing command line arguments when starting lightpush.

Argumonet	Description
--host	A hostname to serve lightpush at
--port	Port number
--secret-key	A key to identify connecting remote servers (more on this later)

E.g.:

python lightpush.py --port=8000

Usage

Assuming the server is running in its default settings.

Connecting from clients (i.e. Browsers)

ws = new WebSocket('ws://127.0.0.1:8086');
ws.onmessage = function(e) {
  var message = e.data;

  // do something with the message here
}

Sending a notification

Notifications are send by making a POST request to lightpush. There are two headers that must be set, for lightpush to accept the request:

1. Authorization must be set to the secret-key that the server was started with.
2. Lightpush-Message, a custom header, must be set to the message you want to send to clients.

E.g. (Python code):

import requests

headers = {
  "Authorization" : "29e03fe7-9e8f-42b2-a9ac-2c9519bdf0b1",
  "Lightpush-Message": "refresh"
}

response = requests.post("127.0.0.1:8086", headers=headers)
assert response.status_code == 202