ntfy

A Flutter plugin to natively subscribe to ntfy (Push notifications made easy) topics on Android using a persistent Foreground Service.

This plugin allows your Flutter application to connect to an ntfy server's JSON stream, maintain a background connection using an Android Foreground Service, and stream incoming notifications directly into your Dart code.

Features

• Native Android Foreground Service: Keeps the connection alive even when your app is in the background or screen is off.
• Server-Sent Events (SSE) JSON Stream: Efficiently listens to incoming ntfy notifications.
• Authentication Support: Native support for passing access tokens or basic authentication credentials to private ntfy instances.
• Flutter EventChannel: Streams received messages back to your Flutter app in real-time.

Platform Support

Currently, this plugin only supports Android.

Getting Started

1. Android Setup

Since this plugin relies on an Android Foreground Service, you need to ensure you request the necessary permissions in your app before starting the service (especially on Android 13+).

In your android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml, the plugin automatically requests:

• android.permission.INTERNET
• android.permission.WAKE_LOCK
• android.permission.FOREGROUND_SERVICE
• android.permission.POST_NOTIFICATIONS

2. Requesting Permissions in Flutter

Before calling the subscribe method, make sure you request notification permissions from the user. You can use the permission_handler package for this:

import 'package:permission_handler/permission_handler.dart';

Future<void> requestPermissions() async {
  if (await Permission.notification.isDenied) {
    await Permission.notification.request();
  }
}

3. Usage

Import the plugin and subscribe to a topic. You can listen to the incoming messages using the messages stream.

import 'package:ntfy/ntfy.dart';

class NtfyExample {
  final _ntfyPlugin = Ntfy();
  StreamSubscription<String>? _messageSubscription;

  void startListening() async {
    // 1. Start listening to the message stream
    _messageSubscription = _ntfyPlugin.messages.listen((String messageJson) {
      print("Received new ntfy message: $messageJson");
      // Note: The message is a JSON string. You can use jsonDecode(messageJson) to parse it.
    });

    // 2. Subscribe and start the Android Foreground Service
    // Connects to: https://ntfy.sh/my_awesome_topic
    await _ntfyPlugin.subscribe('https://ntfy.sh', 'my_awesome_topic');
  }

  void stopListening() {
    _messageSubscription?.cancel();
    _ntfyPlugin.unsubscribe();
  }
}

Authentication

If you are using a self-hosted ntfy server with access control, you can pass an auth parameter to the subscribe method.

Using an Access Token (Bearer Auth)

await _ntfyPlugin.subscribe(
  'https://ntfy.example.com', 
  'secret_topic',
  auth: 'Bearer tk_your_access_token_here',
);

Using Username and Password (Basic Auth)

import 'dart:convert';

final String credentials = base64Encode(utf8.encode('username:password'));

await _ntfyPlugin.subscribe(
  'https://ntfy.example.com', 
  'secret_topic',
  auth: 'Basic $credentials',
);

How it Works

When you call subscribe(), the plugin starts an Android Foreground Service named NtfyForegroundService. This service holds a partial wake lock and opens an HttpURLConnection to the ntfy /json stream endpoint. Whenever a new JSON message is received, it is broadcasted back to the Flutter Engine over a standard EventChannel.

ntfy

ntfy