Notifications

Time to make notifications great General idea is that we have a bunch of different notification t

Time to make notifications great General idea is that we have a bunch of different notification types, and depending on the notification type, the following fields are populated in specific ways: - actor: The object that performed the activity. Typically a user - verb: verb phrase that identifies the action of the activity - target (optional): The object to which the activity was performed - action_object (optional): the object linked to the action itself ## Creating Notifications Because of the wide variety of notification types, creating notifications can be tricky - Basically need a process to create notifications from straightforward parameters (e.g. create invite notification from only a GroupMember object) - On creation, we should dispatch created event. - For Socras, we use the serializer to handle this logic and validation for us. - Serializer also allows us to easily track changes to object - but do we need to track changes and previous attributes of a notification? - Only time we should be updating a notification is to mark read/seen, or to "delete" notification from notification list. - Some notifications also need to disappear once action is taken (e.g. after invitee accepts or declines group invite, the notification should disappear). Need a simple, deterministic way to create notifications. Events might be the perfect way to do this. For invited member - admin/owner invites a member - dispatches group.member.created event - listener creates notification for invitee if status is REQUESTED - WebSocket notifies client of new notification Could have something like: AppNotification.Factory.Group.Invited(**relevant args) - return type would be an unsaved AppNotification, or a payload that could be used directly to create a notification Would also be great if we could maintain notifications for different parts of the app, and store/dispatch them through a single interface. Potential notification categories: - General - Message We could either add a field to AppNotification designating category (e.g. general, message, etc.), or filter by a different category field - Type = specific type of notification ## Client NotificationsContextProvider should provide context for notifications - [x] store counts

**Notifications** are a key feature in technology that can significantly improve efficiency and productivity. It's time to focus on making them better.

By Mike Morton