# Notifications

Wave leverages the default <a href="https://laravel.com/docs/notifications" target="_blank">Laravel Notification</a> system and gives you an elegant UI to display those notifications in your app.

- [When to Use Notifications](#when-to-use)
- [Creating Notifications](#create-notifications)
- [Viewing Notifications](#viewing-notifications)

---

<a name="when-to-use"></a>
### When to use Notifications

When to use notifications in your application will be up to you. Here are a few examples:

1. Notify users in a forum discussion when a new response is added.
2. Notify a user when someone follows them.
3. Notify the user when someone sends them a message.

You get the general idea right? You are the creator and you can decide what kind of notifications your user will receive.

<a name="create-notifications"></a>
### Creating Notifications

We have built the Wave notifications on top of the default Laravel notifications, which are very simple to use and easy to implement.

> If you haven't checked out the Laravel notifications documentation, head on over to the official documentation at <a href="https://laravel.com/docs/notifications" target="_blank">laravel.com/docs/notifications</a>

We can create a new notification by running the following artisan command:

```php
php artisan make:notification TestNotification
```

You will see a new file at: `/app/Notifications/TestNotification`. Scroll down to where you see:

```php
public function via($notifiable)
{
    return ['mail'];
}
```

and change this to:

```php
public function via($notifiable)
{
    return ['database'];
}
```

Then scroll down to where you see:

```php
public function toArray($notifiable)
{
    return [
        //
    ];
}
```

And replace it with:

```php
public function toArray($notifiable)
{
    return [
        'title' => 'My Title Here',
        'icon' => '/storage/users/default.png',
        'body' => 'This is the body content of the notification... Yada yada yada',
        'link' => 'https://google.com'
    ];
}
```

Next, let's create a few notifications. We can do this by using the `tinker` command:

```php
php artisan tinker
```

Inside of the tinker command you will want to run the following command a few times:

```php
App\Models\User::find(1)->notify(new App\Notifications\TestNotification);
```

After you have run that command, let's move on to learning how the user can view those notifications:

<a name="viewing-notifications"></a>
### Viewing Notifications

Login to the application with the admin user and visit any page in your application. You'll notice a bell icon on the top right with a number indicating how many unread notifications you have.

![Notification Bell](https://cdn.devdojo.com/images/april2021/notifications-bell.png)

When you hover over the bell icon you will see a nice dropdown displaying the current user notifications.

![Notification Dropdown](https://cdn.devdojo.com/images/april2021/notifications-dropdown.png)

The user can additionally, click on the `View All Notifications` button at the bottom of the dropdown and they will be taken to their notifications page where they can view all their notifications.