how to send apns notification or Message to specific user in same channel using LRedis in laravel 5.4 and socket.io at nodejs?

Question

I'm creating Chat app in Laravel 5.4 using socket.io at client side also sending APNS notification to a target user.

While doing this when user send Message to target user that Message send more than once means It depends upon number of connections connected with node socket.io server which I'm thinking it's mean's My channel ('messages') looping that message to connected number of clients so it's showing more than once at receiver side. Here My Sender Side (Laravel):

    $redis = LRedis::connection();
        $data = [
            'message' => $msg,
            'user' => $auth,
            'music'=>$music,
            'target_user'=>$target_user
            ];
 $redis->publish('message', json_encode($data));

At socket.js:

var app = require('express')();
var server = require('http').Server(app);
var io = require('socket.io')(server);
var redis = require('redis');
var apn = require('apn');
var request = require('request');
var auth_user_id = null;
var mysql = require('mysql');

var con = mysql.createConnection({
  host: "localhost",
  user: "root",
  password: "",
  database: "database"
});

con.connect(function(err) {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log("Database Connected!");
});
var options = {
    token: {
        key: "app-keys/APNsAuthKey_U3QV9H86BR.p8",
        keyId: "keyId",
        teamId: "teamid",
        cert: "app-keys/musicChatAppDevelopment.pem",
    },
    development: true,
    production: false,
};
var apnProvider = new apn.Provider(options); 
server.listen(8890);
io.on('connection', (socket) => {
    var auth_user_id = socket.handshake.query.auth_user_id; 
    console.log("client connected");
    console.log("Client Socket id--"+socket.id+"-----User Id----"+auth_user_id);
    var redisClient = redis.createClient();
    redisClient.subscribe('message');   
        if(auth_user_id>0) {
            var sql = "UPDATE users SET socket_id ='"+socket.id+"' WHERE id ="+auth_user_id;
                con.query(sql, function (err, result) {
                    if (err) throw err;
                    console.log(result.affectedRows + " record(s) updated");
                });
        }
    redisClient.on('message', (channel, data) => {
        console.log(channel);
            let data_= JSON.parse(data);
            let message_ = data_.message;
            let deviceToken = data_.target_user['ios_token'];
            if(data_.user['id']!=data_.target_user['id']) {
            console.log(data_.target_user['ios_token']);
            var note = new apn.Notification();
            note.expiry = Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) + 3600; // Expires 1 hour from now. 
            note.badge = 0;
            note.sound = "ping.aiff";
            note.alert = {
                "title" : data_.user['first_name'],
                "body" :  message_,
                };
            note.payload =  { "aps" : {
                                "alert" : {
                                "title" : data_.user['first_name'],
                                "body" :  message_
                                } 
                             }
                    }
            note.topic = "com.charpixel.hellodemo";
            console.log(note);
            let socketId = data_.target_user['socket_id'];
                apnProvider.send(note, deviceToken).then( (result) => {
                    console.log(JSON.stringify(result)); 
                });    
                console.log("Target User Socket id "+data_.target_user['socket_id']);
                socket.broadcast(data_.target_user['socket_id']).emit(channel, data);
                io.to(socketId).emit(channel,data);

        }

    });
    socket.on('disconnect', () => {
        redisClient.quit();
    });  
});

At index.blade.php:

var ip = '<?php echo config('app.current_ip'); ?>:8890?auth_user_id='+JSON.parse(user_id)['id'];
    console.log("Curent_URL"+ip);
    var socket = io.connect(ip);
    socket.on('message', function (data) {
});

Also getting apns notification multiple times on my IOS App.

Answer 1

For 1-1 chat you should create separate channel for each chat. Your code sends message on channel 'message' which is subscribed by every client. So there are multiple problems here. For example, if you have 3 clients:

1. redisClient.on('message') will be triggered for all 3 clients.
2. As the data remains same (which means device token remains same), no matter for which client on('message) was triggered, the notification will be sent to the same receiver and that's the reason why you are receiving multiple notifications.

The solution is that you should create a unique channel for each chat. See this stackoverflow answer as an example. Its not using redis but you can change it to work with reddis too.