Learn how to use Novu to quickly send multi-channel (SMS, Email, Chat, Push) notifications and integrate a rich, customizable and ready-to-use realtime UI In-App notification center in Vue apps.

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Requirements

To follow the steps in this quickstart, you’ll need:
  • A Novu account. Sign up for free if you don’t have one yet.
  • A working Vue development environment with a Vue 3 version.
You can also view the completed code of this quick start in a GitHub repo.

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Create a new Vue app

If you already have a working Vue app, please feel free to skip this section. Create a new Vue 3 app by running the following command in your terminal: 
npx create-vue notifications-app
Interactively run through the questions and answer them according to your preference. Then cd into the notifications-app folder and run the following: 
npm install && npm run format && npm run dev

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Install Novu Vue Notification Center Package

The Novu Vue package provides a Vue component wrapper over the web component that you can use to integrate the notification center into your Vue application. Now install the Vue Notification Center package by running the following command in your terminal: 
npm install @novu/notification-center-vue

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Register The Notification Center Plugin

First, register the notification center plugin in your app as a global component. In your main.js or main.ts file, add it like so: 
import { createApp } from 'vue';

import NotificationCenterPlugin from '@novu/notification-center-vue';
import '@novu/notification-center-vue/dist/style.css';

// your app component
import App from './App.vue';

const app = createApp(App);

app.use(NotificationCenterPlugin);
app.mount('#app');

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Use The Notification Center Component

Create a new file, NotificationCenter.vue in the src/components directory. This file will house the Notification Center component. Add the NotificationCenterComponent like so: Using the Composition API 
<script lang="ts" setup>
    const subscriberId = 'INSERT_SUBSCRIBER_ID_HERE'
    const applicationIdentifier = import.meta.env.NOVU_APP_IDENTIFIER
    const sessionLoaded = () => {
        console.log("Notification Center session loaded successfully!")
    }
</script>

<template>
    <NotificationCenterComponent
    :subscriberId="subscriberId"
    :applicationIdentifier="applicationIdentifier"
    :sessionLoaded="sessionLoaded"
    v-slot="slot"
  >
    <button>Notifications: {{ slot.unseenCount }}</button>
  </NotificationCenterComponent>
</template>
src/components/NotificationCenter.vue Using the Options API 
<script lang="ts">
export default {
  data() {
    return {
      applicationIdentifier: import.meta.env.VITE_NOVU_APP_IDENTIFIER,
      subscriberId: 'INSERT_SUBSCRIBER_ID_HERE',
    };
  },
  methods: {
    sessionLoaded() {
      console.log('Session loaded!')
    },
  },
};
</script>

<template>
  <NotificationCenterComponent
    :subscriberId="subscriberId"
    :applicationIdentifier="applicationIdentifier"
    :sessionLoaded="sessionLoaded"
    v-slot="slot"
  >
    <button>Notifications: {{ slot.unseenCount }}</button>
  </NotificationCenterComponent>
</template>
src/components/NotificationCenter.vue The subscriberId ideally should be the id of the logged in user. When a user logs into your app, they’ll be able to see all their notifications in the notification center. For this to work successfully, the user should have been created as a subscriber on Novu. The applicationIdentifier is a public key used to identify your application. Obtain it from your Novu dashboard settings, and add it to your .env file. If there’s none, create a .env file and add it like so: 
VITE_NOVU_APP_IDENTIFIER = YOUR_NOVU_APP_IDENTIFIER;
Replace YOUR_NOVU_APP_IDENTIFIER with the real value from your dashboard.

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Display The In-App Notification Center UI

If you started by creating a new Vue app, then do the following: Head over to src/views/HomeView.vue and import the NotificationCenter.vue component. Replace the entire file with the code below: 
<script setup lang="ts">
import NotificationCenter from '../components/NotificationCenter.vue'
</script>

<template>
  <main>
    <NotificationCenter />
  </main>
</template>
src/views/HomeView.vue Run your app again. You will see a button with the text Notifications: 0. Click on the button to reveal the notification center UI. Voila!
There are no notifications because none has been triggered yet. When notifications are sent to a subscriber, it will show up in the UI. Next, we’ll learn how to trigger notifications.
There’s a probability you might want the general notification bell icon. By default, the component displays the bell icon. Simply delete the button element. Your component should look like this: 
<template>
  <NotificationCenterComponent
    :subscriberId="subscriberId"
    :applicationIdentifier="applicationIdentifier"
    :sessionLoaded="sessionLoaded"
    v-slot="slot"
  >
  </NotificationCenterComponent>
</template>
You should now see a bell button that opens the notification center when clicked. This bell can be customized to your preference, and we will style and modify it in a later step.

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Create A Workflow

The first step to trigger notifications is to create a workflow. A workflow is like a map that holds the entire flow of messages sent to the subscriber.
The recipients of a triggered notification are called subscribers.
The workflow includes the following:
  • Workflow name and Identifier
  • Channel tailored content:
Channel

Content Style

Custom Variables
{{handlebars}} format
EmailHTML✅
Visual Editor✅
SMSText✅
ChatText✅
In-AppText✅
PushText✅
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 In-App as the channel you want to add.

Select the in-app channel

  1. Click on the recently added In-App channel and configure it according to your preferences. Once you’re done, click Update to save your configuration.

Configure it as per your requirements and then save it

I’ll briefly explain the function of each label in the image above.
  • 1-Preview: Shows you a glimpse of how each notification item will look like in the Notification Center UI.
  • 2-Avatar: If turned on, each notification item will show the avatar of the subscriber.
  • 3-Action: With this, you can add a primary and secondary call to action button to each notification item.
  • 4-Notification Feeds: This displays a stream of specific notifications. You can have multiple feeds to show specific notifications in multiple tabs.
  • 5-Redirect URL - This is the URL to which a subscriber can be directed when they click on a notification item.
  • 6-Filter - This feature allows you to configure the criteria for delivering notifications. For instance, you can apply a filter based on a subscriber’s online status to send them an email if they were online within the last hour. Read more about filters.
Feel free to add only text for now and rename the workflow to Onboarding In App. It automatically creates a slug-like Identifier that will be needed in later steps to trigger a notification.

Configure it as shown in this image

Rename the workflow as shown here

Next, we’ll learn how to create subscribers on Novu - Recipients of Notifications

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Create A Subscriber

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. Novu has a plethora of backend SDKs (Node.js, PHP, .NET, Go, Ruby, Python and Kotlin) to choose from to create a subscriber programmatically. This is the recommended method. Obtain your API key from your Novu dashboard. Replace <NOVU_API_KEY> with it. Now check your Novu dashboard. You should see the recently created subscriber. You can also update the subscriber info like so: 
import { Novu } from '@novu/node';

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

await novu.subscribers.update('132', {
  email: 'janedoe@domain.com', // new email
  phone: '+19874567832', // new phone
});

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Trigger A Notification

To trigger a notification, simply run the codesandbox below with the correct credentials. 
// code to trigger a notification
onboarding-in-app is the workflow identifier we created earlier. Ensure the subscriberId value in the backend code that triggers the notification matches the subscriberId in your NotificationCenterComponent code. 
<template>
    <NotificationCenterComponent
    :subscriberId="subscriberId"
    :applicationIdentifier="applicationIdentifier"
    :sessionLoaded="sessionLoaded"
    v-slot="slot"
  >
    <button>Notifications: {{ slot.unseenCount }}</button>
  </NotificationCenterComponent>
</template>

<script lang="ts" setup>
    const subscriberId = '132'
    const applicationIdentifier = import.meta.env.NOVU_APP_IDENTIFIER
    const sessionLoaded = () => {
        console.log("Notification Center session loaded successfully!")
    }
</script>
Check your app again. You should see the recently triggered notification!

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Conclusion

Great job! If you’ve reached this point, you should now have successfully set up the notification center, created a subscriber, a workflow, configured a channel provider and triggered a notification in your Vue application.