About two years ago we rolled out the PhoneGap Push Service to make developers lives easier. The push service allowed you to test your push notification handler logic by running your application in the PhoneGap Developer app without having to setup a FCM/GCM project or APNS certificates. Unfortunately, the service is not widely used, so we have decided to shut it down. If you want to continue using the phonegap-plugin-push plugin, you will need to find an alternative for testing.
Here are some alternatives
The phonegap-plugin-push documentation already provides a number of node scripts you can use to send push messages to both FCM and APNS. As well, a number of leading push providers like AWS Pinpoint, OneSignal, DevicePush, Monaca, PushWoosh and Firebase have helpful tutorials and docs that should make it easy for you to get set up.
Alternatively, you can fork the phonegap-service-push repository and setup your own push service for testing.
Why we’re taking the service down
There are several moving parts that have become difficult to maintain together. The fact that APNS can only target the phonegap-developer-app as published to the Apple apps store, and cannot be generically deployed (as the dev-app currently is), was a definite non-starter. We will be exploring deeper integration into serverless, and hopefully come up with a more portable solution.
Change sucks, we know, and disrupting our users workflow is not a decision we take lightly. Due to the effort involved in maintaining the service, relative to the low usage, we decided to take it down. Please let us know if we can help with the transition to one of the alternatives above by starting a discussion on the PhoneGap Forums.
