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Cover image for 🔔 Notifycli: A Lightweight Go CLI for Firebase Push Notifications
John Afariogun
John Afariogun

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🔔 Notifycli: A Lightweight Go CLI for Firebase Push Notifications

#devops #go #fcm #cobra

Need to send push notifications to your mobile or web clients — from the command line, a backend script, or a CI/CD pipeline — without building a full backend server?
Notifycli is a simple, Go-based CLI that does exactly that: use Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) credentials + a device token to send push notifications.

In this post, I unpack the code, show installation and usage, and highlight how it's built — so you can use or extend it for your own projects.

What is Notifycli?

According to the project README:

  • Notifycli is a “Go CLI for sending push notifications to mobile and web devices using Firebase Cloud Messaging.” (GitHub)
  • It supports sending to a single device (via FCM device token), and allows custom data payloads — e.g. a title, body, optional URL — which your app can use for deep linking or redirection. (GitHub)
  • It uses a clean project structure based on the popular CLI framework Cobra for subcommands and flag parsing. (GitHub)

Because it's a standalone binary (no heavy deps, no web server), it works well for automation: cron jobs, server scripts, deployment hooks, or any backend that just needs to “fire-and-forget” an FCM push.

Project Structure & Architecture

Here’s how the repo is structured: (GitHub)

Notifycli/
 ├── cmd/
 │    ├── root.go         # CLI root command definitions
 │    └── notify.go       # “notify” subcommand: sends a notification
 ├── internal/
 │    └── firebase/
 │         └── client.go  # Firebase FCM client wrapper
 ├── main.go              # Entry point
 ├── go.mod / go.sum      # Module definitions
 ├── test/                # (optional) tests
 └── README.md
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Highlights:

  • cmd/: Uses Cobra to define commands and flags.
  • internal/firebase/client.go: Encapsulates FCM initialization, authentication using a Firebase service-account JSON key, and the logic to send notifications via FCM REST API. (GitHub)
  • Minimal external dependencies — this keeps the binary lightweight and portable.
  • Easy to integrate with scripts, cron jobs, CI/CD pipelines — you just call notifcli notify ....

How to Build & Use

1. Clone & Build 

git clone https://github.com/johnafariogun/Notifycli.git
cd Notifycli
go build -o notifcli
# optionally:
go install
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2. Provide Firebase Credentials

  • Go to your Firebase project → Project Settings → Service Accounts → Generate new private key.
  • Download the serviceAccount.json and place it in your project root (or anywhere you like, but pass its path with --creds). (GitHub)

3. Send a Notification via CLI 

notifcli notify \
  --token <DEVICE_FCM_TOKEN> \
  --title "Deployment Successful" \
  --body "Your service is live." \
  --creds /path/to/serviceAccount.json
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Optional flag: --url, to include a link in the data payload (useful for app deep links or redirect URLs). (GitHub)

That’s all — a simple, one-liner to trigger a push notification from anywhere.

Under the Hood: What’s Going On

  • The CLI parses flags (token, title, body, url, creds) via Cobra in cmd/notify.go. (GitHub)
  • The internal/firebase/client.go module: initializes a Firebase app using the provided service account, constructs the FCM message (with title/body, and optional data payload containing link), and sends the request to FCM via HTTPS. (GitHub)
  • Error handling covers cases like missing credentials, invalid FCM token, or network failures. The CLI prints descriptive error messages. (GitHub)
  • Because it's a native Go binary, it’s cross-platform (Linux, macOS, etc.) and doesn’t require runtime dependencies beyond Go’s standard library + net/http.

Why This Tool Matters

  • Simplicity & Speed: No need to build a full backend just to send notifications.
  • Automation-friendly: Great for deployment scripts, CI/CD, cron jobs, or server-side alerts.
  • Portable: Build once, deploy anywhere.
  • Extensible: You can extend internal/firebase/client.go to support more advanced FCM features — e.g. topic messages, batch sends, custom data payloads, image notifications. The architecture is clean and modular. (GitHub)

Wrap-up & Final Thoughts

Notifycli is a great example of how a small, focused tool can do one thing well — in this case: send FCM push notifications — and integrate easily into scripts, automation, or backend workflows.
Its clean Go + Cobra structure and minimal dependencies make it perfect for developers or DevOps workflows that don’t need a full backend server just for notifications.

If you need a lightweight, scriptable, cross-platform tool for mobile/web push notifications — especially useful for deployment alerts, status updates, or automation — give Notifycli a try.

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