NodeJS quickstart

Welcome to the Node.js Quickstart guide for Novu, a powerful notification service that enables you to send multi-channel (SMS, Email, Chat, Push) notifications from your Node.js applications. In this Quickstart, you’ll learn how to seamlessly integrate Novu into your app and perform various essential tasks. Let’s get started!

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Prerequisites

Before diving into the Quickstart, make sure you have the following:

• Node.js installed on your development machine.
• A Novu account. If you don’t have one, sign up for free at the web dashboard

You can also view the completed code of this quick start in a GitHub repo.

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Install and Set Up Novu in your Node.js App

First, you must install the Novu package in your Node.js application. Open your terminal and run the following command:

npm install @novu/node

Once installed, you can import Novu into your app and initialize it using your Novu account credentials. This step establishes a connection between your app and the Novu notification service.

import { Novu } from '@novu/node';

const novu = new Novu('<NOVU_API_KEY>');

Replace the <NOVU_API_KEY> value with the authentic key from the API Key section of your Novu Dashboard.

🔑 Note: Please do not hardcode your credentials in a file in production. Use environment variables instead.

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Set Up A Channel Provider

A channel provider is a service that provides one or more notification functionality such as sending an email, SMS, push notification etc. Our integration store includes four channels: Email, SMS, Chat, and Push. These channels have multiple providers associated with them.

Only one provider can be active per channel. Connect any of your favorite providers to get started. The email channel comes with Novu’s email provider, which is active by default and includes 300 credits.

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Create a Workflow

A workflow is the blueprint for the notifications that will be sent. It holds the entire flow of messages sent to the subscriber. This is where all the different channels are tied together under a single entity.

The workflow includes the following:

• Workflow name and Identifier
• Channel tailored content:

Note: Proper authorization needs to be set for the Chat channel for subscribers.

Please proceed to create a workflow.

1. Click “Workflows” on the left sidebar of your Novu dashboard.
2. Click the “Create Workflow” button on the top right.
3. The name of the new workflow is currently “Untitled.” Rename it to a more suitable title.
4. Select “Email” as the channel you want to add.

Choose email as the channel you want to add

5. Click on the recently added channel, fill the email subject and click “Update”.

Fill in email subject

6. Click on the “Test” tab and send a test email to verify your workflow.

Send test email to verify your workflow

You should get an email within seconds. Yaaay, you have successfully sent your first notification via the Novu dashboard! Now, let’s take it a step further to trigger notifications via code.

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Create A Subscriber

The recipients of a triggered notification are called subscribers.

Click “Subscribers” on the left sidebar of the Novu dashboard to see all subscribers. By default, the dashboard will display a subscriber, as you were added automatically during sign-up.

Subscribers from the left sidebar shows all the subscriber

Now, let’s create a subscriber on Novu. Copy and paste the following code to do so:

// Create a subscriber
const subscriberId = '7789'; // Replace this with a unique user ID that matches your database.
await novu.subscribers.identify(subscriberId, {
  email: 'abc@gmail.com', // optional
  firstName: 'John', // optional
  lastName: 'Doe', // optional
  phone: '', // optional
  avatar: '', // optional
  locale: '', // optional
  data: { customKey1: 'customVal1', customKey2: 'customVal2' }, // optional
});

Run the code in your terminal like so:

node index.js

You should see the subscriber on your Novu dashboard.

I’d like to publicly announce that abc@gmail.com is a random unlikely email your users will have. To update this to an alternative email, you can call the updateSubscriber method like so:

// Update subscriber detail
await novu.subscribers.update('7789', {
  // new email
  email: 'validemail@gmail.com', // optional
  // new phone
  phone: '+19874567832', // optional
});

Other valid fields that can be updated are phone, avatar, and data . The data field can accept an array of metadata that you want to attach to the subscriber.

Note: To make all of your app users subscribers, you need to programmatically add them to Novu.

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Trigger A Notification

Copy and paste the following code into your app to trigger a notification:

const notificationWorkflowId = 'first-email';

novu.trigger(notificationWorkflowId, {
  to: {
    subscriberId: '7789',
  },
  payload: {},
});

Before running the code, make sure you understand the following:

• The value of notificationWorkflowId should be the workflow’s trigger ID/slug.

Make sure your workflow's trigger ID/slug matches the value you'd used

• The value of payload is an array of the data that you want to be dynamically injected into the workflow content.
• The value of subscriberId is the id of the subscriber on Novu. Replace 7789 with your subscriber ID.

Run the code to trigger a notification!

node index.js

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Topics

Novu provides a simple API that offers an easy interface for triggering notifications to multiple subscribers at once. This API is called “Topics” and allows users to manage their bulk notifications without having to implement complex loops. A topic is identified by a custom key that is provided by the user, and this key will be the identifier used in the Topics API.

⚠️ DANGER: The topic key should be unique and can’t be changed once chosen. Novu also safe guards for key uniqueness behind the scenes.

Users can assign a name to a topic for descriptive purposes. This name does not need to be unique and can be changed using the API.

A topic can have different subscribers, who will receive a notification whenever a notification is sent to the topic.

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Create a topic

Copy and paste the following code into your app to create a topic:

const result = await novu.topics.create({
  key: 'unique-topic-identifier',
  name: 'descriptive-topic-name',
});

Before running the code, make sure you understand the following:

• When creating a key, ensure it is unique and accurately identifies the topic. Document naming conventions and communicate them to team members to avoid confusion and ensure a smooth workflow.
• The value of name should be a descriptive topic name.

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Add Subscribers To A Topic

Copy and paste the following code into your app to add subscribers to a topic.

const topicKey = '<YOUR TOPIC KEY>';

const response = await novu.topics.addSubscribers(topicKey, {
  subscribers: ['subscriber-id-1', 'subscriber-id-2', ...],
});

• To add multiple subscribers to a topic, simply separate their names with commas and add them to the array as part of the subscribers value.

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Send Notification To A Topic

Thanks to the topics feature, it is possible to trigger a notification to all subscribers assigned to a topic. This helps avoid listing all subscriber identifiers in the to field of the notification trigger.

To trigger a notification to all subscribers of a topic, use Novu’s API as follows:

const topicKey = '<TOPIC_KEY>';
const notificationTemplateId = '<WORKFLOW_TRIGGER_IDENTIFIER>';

await novu.trigger(notificationTemplateId, {
  to: [{ type: 'Topic', topicKey: topicKey }],
  payload: {},
});

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Conclusion

Great job! If you’ve reached this point, you should now have successfully created a subscriber, workflow, configured a channel provider, triggered a single notification, created a topic, added a subscriber to a topic and even triggered a notification to a topic in your application.