Pusher’s Channels

A Comprehensive tutorial on getting started with Pusher’s Channels

Dasika Sri Bhuvana Vaishnavi

3 min readOct 31, 2022

Channel in a nutshell

Each programme can support any number of channels, and users can pick and choose which ones they want to receive.

Channels provide:

Filtering Data: It’s up to the individual user to decide which channels they want to receive, although each software can support an unlimited number of channels.
Controlling Access: A mechanism for regulating access to various forms of data. A project management tool, for instance, may need to select which users are allowed to receive information on “top-secret-projectX.”

Channel Types:

Public channels can be subscribed to by anyone who knows their name
Private channels should have a private- prefix. They introduce a mechanism which lets your server control access to the data you are broadcasting
Private encrypted channels should have a private-encrypted- prefix. They extend the authorization mechanism of private channels, adding encryption of the data payloads so that not even Pusher can get access to it without authorization.
Presence channels should have a presence- prefix and are an extension of private channels. They let you ‘register’ user information on your subscription, and let other members of the channel know who’s online
Cache channels remember the last published message and deliver it to clients when they subscribe. The cache channel is available in public, private, and private-encrypted modes.

Channel Naming :

Channel names should only have letters (both small and capital), numbers, and the following punctuation: _ - = @ , . ;

foo-bar_1234@=,.;

# is a reserved character for internal use by Pusher Channels. Applications can’t create channel names containing #.

Accessing channels

If a channel is already part of a subscription, it can be found via its name in the pusher.channel function:

var channel = pusher.channel(channelName);

channelNameString

The name of the channel to retrieve

Implementing the SDK’s Quickstarts

The pusher protocol lets you use software development kits (SDKs), which makes it easier to use in many different settings. Following is a list of software development kits (SDKs) and the environments in which they can be used to implement the pusher protocol.