Push Notifications in React Native Using OneSignal

In this article, we will learn how to implement push notifications in React Native using OneSignal. Push notifications are an essential part of any mobile application. They help to keep users engaged and informed about important updates and changes in the app.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, we need to have the following prerequisites in place:

• A React Native project
• A OneSignal account
• The latest version of Node.js installed on your computer
• The OneSignal SDK for React Native installed in your project

Creating a React Native Project

To create a React Native project, open the command line and run the following command:

npx react-native init MyProject

This will create a new React Native project with the name MyProject.

Installing OneSignal Dependencies

Now that we have our React Native project ready, we need to install the OneSignal dependencies. To do this, open the command line and run the following command:

cd MyProject
npm install react-native-onesignal

This will install the OneSignal SDK for React Native in your project.

Sending Push Notifications in React Native Using OneSignal

Now that we have our React Native project ready and the OneSignal SDK installed, we can start sending push notifications.

First, we need to create a OneSignal account. Once we have an account, we need to create an app in the OneSignal dashboard. This will generate an app ID, which we need to use in our React Native project.

Next, we need to update our project's android/app/build.gradle file with the app ID generated by OneSignal.

defaultConfig {
    ...
    manifestPlaceholders = [
        onesignal_app_id: "YOUR-ONESIGNAL-APP-ID",
        ...
    ]
}

We also need to update our project's android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml file with the app ID generated by OneSignal.

<manifest ...>
    <application ...>
        <meta-data
            android:name="onesignal_app_id"
            android:value="YOUR-ONESIGNAL-APP-ID" />
        ...
    </application>
</manifest>

Finally, we need to update our project's index.js file with the following code. This code will initialize the OneSignal SDK and register the device for push notifications.

import React from "react";
import { AppRegistry, Platform } from "react-native";
import OneSignal from "react-native-onesignal";

OneSignal.init("YOUR-ONESIGNAL-APP-ID");

if (Platform.OS === "android") {
    OneSignal.registerForPushNotifications();
}

// App code

Now we can send push notifications to our React Native app using the OneSignal dashboard.

Conclusion

In this article, we learned how to implement push notifications in React Native using OneSignal. We started by setting up the prerequisites and creating a React Native project. Then, we installed the OneSignal SDK and configured our project for push notifications. Finally, we wrote the code to initialize the OneSignal SDK and register the device for push notifications. Now we can send push notifications to our React Native app using the OneSignal dashboard.