Sending Multiple Push Notifications to iPhones with PHP, APNS, and PHP

In a system where both students and doctors communicate via a website and mobile application, it becomes essential to implement push notifications for instant updates. This article provides a comprehensive solution for sending push notifications to multiple iPhone users from a PHP website.

Implementing Push Notifications with PHP

To enable push notifications, each user's device token is stored during registration. Next, a simple PHP function like the one provided can be employed to send messages.

function sendPushNotification($deviceToken, $message) {
  // Initialize variables
  $ctx = stream_context_create();
  $passphrase = 'my_passphrase';
  $certificatePath = 'ckipad.pem';

  // Establish SSL connection
  stream_context_set_option($ctx, 'ssl', 'local_cert', $certificatePath);
  stream_context_set_option($ctx, 'ssl', 'passphrase', $passphrase);
  $fp = stream_socket_client('ssl://gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com:2195', $err, $errstr, 60, STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT | STREAM_CLIENT_PERSISTENT, $ctx);
  if (!$fp) {
    exit("Failed to connect: $err $errstr" . PHP_EOL);
  }

  // Create payload
  $payload = array(
    'aps' => array(
      'badge' =>  1,
      'alert' => $message,
      'sound' => 'default'
    )
  );

  // Encode payload
  $payload = json_encode($payload);

  // Build binary notification
  $msg = chr(0) . pack('n', 32) . pack('H*', $deviceToken) . pack('n', strlen($payload)) . $payload;

  // Send notification
  $result = fwrite($fp, $msg, strlen($msg));
  if (!$result) {
    echo 'Message not delivered' . PHP_EOL;
  } else {
    echo 'Message successfully delivered:' . $message . PHP_EOL;
  }

  // Close connection
  fclose($fp);
}