Pusher client library for Java targeting Android and general Java.

This README covers the following topics:

• Installation
• API Overview
• The Pusher constructor
• Connecting
• Disconnecting
• Listening to connection events
• Subscribing to channels
  • Public
  • Private
  • Presence
• Binding and handling events
  • Unbinding events
• Triggering client events
• Accessing the connection socket ID
• JavaDocs
• Library development environment

You can get the library in three ways.

As of version 0.2.0, pusher-java-client is available in Maven Central:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.pusher</groupId>
  <artifactId>pusher-java-client</artifactId>
  <version>0.2.0</version>
</dependency>

You can download a version of the .jar directly via http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/pusher/pusher-java-client/

You can build the project from source. For more information see Library development environment.

Here's the API in a nutshell.

// Create a new Pusher instance
Pusher pusher = new Pusher(YOUR_APP_KEY);

// Connect
pusher.connect(new ConnectionEventListener() {

  @Override
  public void onConnectionStateChange(ConnectionStateChange change) {
    // handle connection state change
  }

  @Override
  public void onError(String message, String code, Exception e) {
    // handle connection error
  }
}, ConnectionState.ALL);

// Subscribe to a channel
Channel channel = pusher.subscribe("my-channel");

// Bind to an event and listen for events
channel.bind("my-event", new SubscriptionEventListener() {

  @Override
  public void onEvent(String channel, String event, String data) {
    // do something with the event data
  }
});

More information in reference format can be found below.

The standard constructor take an application key which you can get from the app's API Access section in the Pusher dashboard.

Pusher pusher = new Pusher(YOUR_APP_KEY);

If you are going to use private or presence channels then you will need to provide an Authorizer to be used when authenticating subscriptions. In order to do this you need to pass in a PusherOptions object which has had an Authorizer set.

HttpAuthorizer authorizer = new HttpAuthorizer("http://example.com/some_auth_endpoint");
PusherOptions options = new PusherOptions().setAuthorizer(authorizer);
Pusher pusher = new Pusher(YOUR_APP_KEY, options);

See the documentation on Authenticating Users for more information.

You can also specify the Pusher cluster you wish to connect to on the PusherOptions, e.g.

options.setCluster("eu");

If you need finer control over the endpoint then the setHost, setWsPort and setWssPort methods can be employed.

In order to send and receive messages you need to connect to Pusher.

Pusher pusher = new Pusher(YOUR_APP_KEY);
pusher.connect();

The connect method is also used to re-connect in case the connection has been lost, for example if an Android device loses reception. Note that the state of channel subscriptions and event bindings will be preserved while disconnected and re-negotiated with the server once a connection is re-established.

pusher.disconnect();

It is possible to receive connection state change events by implementing the ConnectionEventListener interface.

Pusher pusher = new Pusher(YOUR_APP_KEY);
pusher.connect(new ConnectionListener() {

  @Override
  public void onConnectionStateChange(ConnectionStateChange change) {
    System.out.println(
      String.format("Connection state changed from [%s] to [%s]", change.getPreviousState(), change.getCurrentState())
    );
  }

  @Override
  public void onError(String message, String code, Exception e) {
    System.out.println("Error: " + message);
  }
});

For more information see connection states.

Pusher uses the concept of channels as a way of subscribing to data. They are identified and subscribed to by a simple name. Events are bound to on a channels and are also identified by name. To listen to an event you need to implemented the ChannelEventListener interface (see Binding and handling events).

As mentioned above, channel subscriptions need only be registered once per Pusher instance. They are preserved across disconnection and re-established with the server on reconnect. They should NOT be re-registered. They may, however, be registered before the first call to connect.

Channel channel = pusher.subscribe("my-channel");

Sometimes you may want to be informed when the subscription succeeds. You can do this by implementing the ChannelEventListener interface:

Channel channel = pusher.subscribe("my-channel", new ChannelEventListener() {

  @Override
  public void onSubscriptionSucceeded(String channelName) {
    System.out.println("Subscribed to channel: " + channelName);
  }

  @Override
  public void onEvent(String channelName, String eventName, String data) {
	
  }
});

It's possible to subscribe to private channels that provide a mechanism for authenticating channel subscriptions. In order to do this you need to provide an Authorizer when creating the Pusher instance (see The Pusher constructor above).

The library provides a HttpAuthorizer implementation of Authorizer which makes an HTTP POST request to an authenticating endpoint. However, you an implement your own authentication mechanism if required.

Private channels are subscribed to as follows:

PrivateChannel privateChannel = pusher.subscribePrivate( "private-channel" );

In addition to the events that are possible on public channels a private channel exposes an onAuthenticationFailure. This is called if the Authorizer does not successfully authenticate the subscription:

PrivateChannel channel = pusher.subscribePrivate( "private-channel",
  new PrivateChannelEventListener() {

    @Override
    public void onAuthenticationFailure(String message, Exception e) {
	  System.out.println(
        String.format("Authentication failure due to [%s], exception was [%s]", message, e)
      );
    }

    // Other ChannelEventListener methods
  });

Presence channels are private channels which provide additional events exposing who is currently subscribed to the channel. Since they extend private channels they also need to be authenticated (see authenticating channel subscriptions).

Presence channels can be subscribed to as follows:

PresenceChannel presenceChannel = pusher.subscribePresence( "presence-channel" );

Presence channels provide additional events relating to users joining (subscribing) and leaving (unsubscribing) the presence channel. It is possible to listen to these events by implementing the PresenceChannelEventListener.

PresenceChannel channel = pusher.subscribePresence( "presence-channel",
  new PresenceChannelEventListener() {

    @Override
    public void onUserInformationReceived(String channelName, Set<User> users) {
	  for (User user : users) {
	    userSubscribed(channelName, user);
	  }
    }

    @Override
    public void userSubscribed(String channelName, User user) {
	  System.out.println(
        String.format("A new user has joined channel [%s]: %s, %s", channelName,
          user.getId(), user.getInfo())
      );

	  if (user.equals(channel.getMe())) {
	    System.out.println("me");
	  }
    }

    @Override
    public void userUnsubscribed(String channelName, User user) {
      System.out.println(
        String.format( "A user has left channel [%s]: %s %s", channelName,
          user.getId(), user.getInfo() )
      );
    }

    // Other ChannelEventListener methods

  });

Note: In the Pusher documentation a User may be referred to as a Member.

The User object has two main methods.

getId fetches a unique identifier for the user on the presence channel.

getInfo fetches a string representing arbitrary additional information about the user. The contents of this is entirely up to your application. However, it's recommended that the data is in JSON format so that it can easily be deserialized.

The following example using the Gson library to handle deserialization:

String jsonInfo = user.getInfo();
Gson gson = new Gson();
UserInfo info = gson.fromJson(jsonInfo, UserInfo.class);

For more information on defining the user id and user info on the server see Implementing the auth endpoint for a presence channel documentation.

There are two types of events that occur on channel subscriptions.

1. Protocol related events such as those triggered when a subscription succeeds
2. Application events that have been triggered by code within your application

The ChannelEventListener is an interface that is informed of both protocol related events and application data events. A ChannelEventListener can be used when initially subscribing to a channel.

Channel channel = pusher.subscribe("my-channel", new ChannelEventListener() {

  @Override
  public void onSubscriptionSucceeded(String channelName) {
    System.out.println("Subscribed!");
  }

  @Override
  public void onEvent(String channelName, String eventName, String data) {
	
  }

});

The ChannelEventListener interface extends the SubscriptionEventListener interface.

Events triggered by your application are received by the onEvent method on the SubscriptionEventListener interface implementation. If you are only related to application events you can bind to events on Channel objects.

Channel channel = pusher.subscribe("my-channel");
channel.bind("my-event", new ChannelEventListener() {

  @Override
  public void onEvent(String channelName, String eventName, String data) {
	
  }

});

The event data will be passed as the third parameter to the onEvent method. From there you can handle the data as you like. Since we encourage data to be in JSON here's an example that uses Gson object deserialization:

public class Example implements ChannelEventListener {

  public Example() {
    Pusher pusher = new Pusher(YOUR_APP_KEY);
    pusher.connect();

    pusher.subscribe("my-channel", this);
  }

  @Override
  public void onEvent(String channelName, String eventName, String data) {
    Gson gson = new Gson();
    EventExample exampleEvent = gson.fromJson(data, EventExample.class);
  }

}

class EventExample {
  private int value1 = 1;
  private String value2 = "abc";
  private transient int value3 = 3;
  EventExample() {
  }
}

You can unbind from an event:

channel.unbind("my_event", listener);

public class Example implements ChannelEventListener {

  private final Pusher pusher;
  private final Channel channel;

  public Example() {
    pusher = new Pusher(YOUR_APP_KEY);
    pusher.connect();

    channel = pusher.subscribe("my-channel", this, "my_event");
  }

  public void listenToOtherEvent() {
    channel.bind("my_other_event", this);
  }

  public void stopListeningToOtherEvent() {
    channel.unbind("my_other_event", this);
  }

}

Once a private or presence subscription has been authorized (see authenticating users) and the subscription has succeeded, it is possible to trigger events on those channels.

channel.trigger("client-myEvent", "{\"myName\":\"Bob\"}");

Events triggered by clients are called client events. Because they are being triggered from a client which may not be trusted there are a number of enforced rules when using them. Some of these rules include:

• Event names must have a client- prefix
• Rate limits
• You can only trigger an event when the subscription has succeeded

For full details see the client events documentation.

PrivateChannel channel = pusher.subscribePrivate("private-channel", 
  new PrivateChannelEventListener() {
	  
    @Override
    public void onSubscriptionSucceeded(String channelName) {
	  channel.trigger("client-myEvent", "{\"myName\":\"Bob\"}");
    }

    // Other PrivateChannelEventListener methods
  });

Once connected you can access a unique identifier for the current client's connection. This is known as the socket_id.

You can access the value once the connection has been established as follows:

String socketId = pusher.getConnection().getSocketId();

For more information on how and why there is a socket_id see the documentation on authenticating users and excluding recipients.

The JavaDocs can be found here: http://pusher.github.com/pusher-java-client/

• Apache Maven, the build system used for the project

• Clone the project: git clone https://github.com/pusher/pusher-java-client
• Change to the top level directory for the project: cd pusher-java-client
• Retrieve the Java-WebSocket library: git submodule update --init

Assuming you are using Eclipse, follow these steps:

• If you have not used Eclipse and Maven together before (so you don't have an M2_REPO classpath variable configured):
  • Make a note of your Eclipse workspace location, for example /home/user/workspace
  • In the root of the project execute mvn -Declipse.workspace="<your workspace location>" eclipse:configure-workspace. This will add an M2_REPO environment variable to your Eclipse workspace, which is required for the next step.
• Still in the root of the project execute mvn eclipse:clean eclipse:eclipse. This will read the pom file to determine the dependencies and generate .project and .classpath files that point to those dependencies in your local Maven cache.

You can now load the project in Eclipse by navigating to Import project and pointing it to the root directory of the project.

From the top level directory execute mvn clean test to compile and run the unit tests or mvn clean package to build the jar. The jar will be output to the target directory.

After running mvn clean package change to the target directory and run java -jar pusher-java-client-<version>-jar-with-dependencies.jar. This will run the example application.

By default the example will connect to a sample application and subscribe to the channel my-channel, listening to events on my-event. If you want to change these defaults, they can be specified on the command line:

java -jar pusher-java-client-<version>-jar-with-dependencies.jar [appKey] [channelName] [eventName]