Push Gateway API

Clients may want to receive push notifications when events are received at the homeserver. This is managed by a distinct entity called the Push Gateway.

Overview

A client’s homeserver forwards information about received events to the push gateway. The gateway then submits a push notification to the push notification provider (e.g. APNS, GCM).

                                   +--------------------+  +-------------------+
                  Matrix HTTP      |                    |  |                   |
             Notification Protocol |   App Developer    |  |   Device Vendor   |
                                   |                    |  |                   |
           +-------------------+   | +----------------+ |  | +---------------+ |
           |                   |   | |                | |  | |               | |
           | Matrix homeserver +----->  Push Gateway  +------> Push Provider | |
           |                   |   | |                | |  | |               | |
           +-^-----------------+   | +----------------+ |  | +----+----------+ |
             |                     |                    |  |      |            |
    Matrix   |                     |                    |  |      |            |
 Client/Server API  +              |                    |  |      |            |
             |      |              +--------------------+  +-------------------+
             |   +--+-+                                           |
             |   |    <-------------------------------------------+
             +---+    |
                 |    |          Provider Push Protocol
                 +----+

         Mobile Device or Client

API standards

Unsupported endpoints

If a request for an unsupported (or unknown) endpoint is received then the server must respond with a 404 M_UNRECOGNIZED error.

Similarly, a 405 M_UNRECOGNIZED error is used to denote an unsupported method to a known endpoint.

Homeserver behaviour

This describes the format used by “HTTP” pushers to send notifications of events to Push Gateways. If the endpoint returns an HTTP error code, the homeserver SHOULD retry for a reasonable amount of time using exponential backoff.

When pushing notifications for events, the homeserver is expected to include all of the event-related fields in the /notify request. When the homeserver is performing a push where the format is "event_id_only", only the event_id, room_id, counts, and devices are required to be populated.

Note that most of the values and behaviour of this endpoint is described by the Client-Server API’s Push Module.

POST /_matrix/push/v1/notify

This endpoint is invoked by HTTP pushers to notify a push gateway about an event or update the number of unread notifications a user has. In the former case it will contain selected information about the event. In either case it may contain numeric counts of the number of unread events of different types the user has. The counts may be sent along with a notification about an event or by themselves.

Notifications about a particular event will normally cause the user to be alerted in some way. It is therefore necessary to perform duplicate suppression for such notifications using the event_id field to avoid retries of this HTTP API causing duplicate alerts. The operation of updating counts of unread notifications should be idempotent and therefore do not require duplicate suppression.

Clients interested in receiving notifications via this endpoint MUST configure its full URI when creating the associated pusher via /_matrix/client/v3/pushers/set.

Rate-limited: No
Requires authentication: No

Request

Request body

Name Type Description
notification Notification

Required: Information about the push notification
Notification
Name Type Description
content EventContent

The content field from the event, if present. The pusher may omit this if the event had no content or for any other reason.
counts Counts

This is a dictionary of the current number of unacknowledged communications for the recipient user. Counts whose value is zero should be omitted.
devices [Device]

Required: This is an array of devices that the notification should be sent to.
event_id string

The Matrix event ID of the event being notified about. This is required if the notification is about a particular Matrix event. It may be omitted for notifications that only contain updated badge counts. This ID can and should be used to detect duplicate notification requests.
prio string

The priority of the notification. If omitted, high is assumed. This may be used by push gateways to deliver less time-sensitive notifications in a way that will preserve battery power on mobile devices.

One of: [high, low].
room_alias string

An alias to display for the room in which the event occurred.
room_id string

The ID of the room in which this event occurred. Required if the notification relates to a specific Matrix event.
room_name string

The name of the room in which the event occurred.
sender string

The sender of the event as in the corresponding event field.
sender_display_name string

The current display name of the sender in the room in which the event occurred.
type string

The type of the event as in the event’s type field.
user_is_target boolean

This is true if the user receiving the notification is the subject of a member event (i.e. the state_key of the member event is equal to the user’s Matrix ID).
Counts
Name Type Description
missed_calls integer

The number of unacknowledged missed calls a user has across all rooms of which they are a member.
unread integer

The number of unread messages a user has across all of the rooms they are a member of.
Device
Name Type Description
app_id string

Required: The app_id given when the pusher was created.
data PusherData

A dictionary of additional pusher-specific data. This is the data dictionary passed in at pusher creation minus the url key.
pushkey string

Required: The pushkey given when the pusher was created.
pushkey_ts integer

The unix timestamp (in seconds) when the pushkey was last updated.
tweaks Tweaks

A dictionary of customisations made to the way this notification is to be presented. These are added by push rules.
PusherData
Name Type Description
format string

The format to use for sending notifications.

Request body example

{
  "notification": {
    "content": {
      "body": "I'm floating in a most peculiar way.",
      "msgtype": "m.text"
    },
    "counts": {
      "missed_calls": 1,
      "unread": 2
    },
    "devices": [
      {
        "app_id": "org.matrix.matrixConsole.ios",
        "data": {},
        "pushkey": "V2h5IG9uIGVhcnRoIGRpZCB5b3UgZGVjb2RlIHRoaXM/",
        "pushkey_ts": 12345678,
        "tweaks": {
          "sound": "bing"
        }
      }
    ],
    "event_id": "$3957tyerfgewrf384",
    "prio": "high",
    "room_alias": "#exampleroom:matrix.org",
    "room_id": "!slw48wfj34rtnrf:example.com",
    "room_name": "Mission Control",
    "sender": "@exampleuser:matrix.org",
    "sender_display_name": "Major Tom",
    "type": "m.room.message"
  }
}

Responses

Status Description
200 A list of rejected push keys.

200 response

Name Type Description
rejected [string]

Required: A list of all pushkeys given in the notification request that are not valid. These could have been rejected by an upstream gateway because they have expired or have never been valid. Homeservers must cease sending notification requests for these pushkeys and remove the associated pushers. It may not necessarily be the notification in the request that failed: it could be that a previous notification to the same pushkey failed. May be empty.

 
{
  "rejected": [
    "V2h5IG9uIGVhcnRoIGRpZCB5b3UgZGVjb2RlIHRoaXM/"
  ]
}