504 timeout error when sending many notifications using laravel +firebase messaging - laravel

Question

I m sending notifications to many users at the same time and this is my code:
public function sendNotifications($title,$body,$image){
$SERVER_API_KEY ="my_api_key";
$tokens=DB::select("select * from fcm_token");
$token_array=[];
for( $i =0;$i<count($tokens);$i++){
array_push($token_array,$tokens[$i]->token);
}
$data = [
"registration_ids" =>
$token_array
,
"notification" => [
"title" => $title,
"body" => $body,
"image" => $image,
"sound"=> "default" // required for sound on ios
],
];
$dataString = json_encode($data);
$headers = [
'Authorization: key=' . $SERVER_API_KEY,
'Content-Type: application/json',
];
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://fcm.googleapis.com/fcm/send');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $dataString);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
}
this function is executed after a form is filled by the admin who should give the title body and image to the back-end. after that, he must wait for the task to be complete (to make sure that everyone got the notification ). it was working like a charm before but right now after a long loading time, the server responds with 504 timeout. I know that I could have queued but would that solve the problem? wouldn't the Queue be stopped also by the same error? I m hosting the app in shared hosting (lws) and my max execution time is 60 seconds and can't increase it without paying more but I want to be sure where the problem resides.
I tried to test it with just 100 users, and it is working like a charm, but I need to send it to more than that since my users are more than 4000.

Answer 1

Google clound messaging supports sending to 1000 tokens at once.
$tokens=array_chunk($all_tokens,1000);
foreach($tokens as $thousand_tokens){
send_notification($thousand_tokens, $request->title.' Video added', 'New Video added in '.$cat->category->name, $cat->image_url, $data);
}
Above one is sample code. You can use that to modify your code.
function send_notification($tokens, $message, $description, $image, $data)
{
try{
$token_ids = array($tokens);
$apiKey = env('FCM_KEY');
$url = 'https://fcm.googleapis.com/fcm/send';
$msg =
array(
"registration_ids"=> $tokens,
"collapseKey"=> "com.notification",
"data"=> $data,
"notification"=> array(
"android"=> array(
"channelId"=> "Notifications-Channel",
"imageUrl"=> $image,
"sound"=> "sample.mp3"
),
"sound"=> "sample.mp3",
"channelId"=> "Notifications-Channel",
"android_channel_id"=> "Notifications-Channel",
"body"=> $description,
"title"=> $message
)
);
define("GOOGLE_API_KEY", $apiKey);
$headers = array(
'Authorization: key='.$apiKey,
'Content-Type: application/json'
);
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($msg));
$result = curl_exec($ch);
if ($result === FALSE) {
die('Curl failed: ' . curl_error($ch));
}
curl_close($ch);
return $result;
}catch(Exception $e){
return 'at exception '.$e->getLine();
die('Error: '.$e->getMessage());
}
}