I have a messaging app built using the Ionic framework (on cordova). I plan on building this for android, and I'd like a way to send and recieve push notifications from the app using javascript/ionic.
Are there any good tutorials out there on how to go about setting something like this up?
Use this plugin https://github.com/phonegap-build/PushPlugin.
Android devices receive push notifications through the Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) service, whereas iOS devices receive them from the Apple Push Notifications (APN) Service.
The way the notifications are received (by sound, alert etc) is a combination of the options set in the application code upon registration as well as the user’s device settings for notifications.
If you want more specific follow below tutorial :
http://devgirl.org/2013/07/17/tutorial-implement-push-notifications-in-your-phonegap-application/
There is example application made available by Holly Schinsky. The core of it is the usage of PushPlugin which is the standard method to handle push notifications on Cordova. There is quite extensive tutorial provided for this subject on their documentation on that GitHub repository. The main method is pushNotification.register which registers the device to listen for push notifications.
If you instead need to trigger notification locally, you might want to take a look at Local notification plugin instead. With it you can add notifications to be shown on the device without the need for external services to send the push notifications.
ngCordova has a plugin that supports Push Notifications. It has sample code for iOS and Android. Check it out: http://ngcordova.com/docs/plugins/pushNotifications/