Notification Center for Shopware 6 — Installation, configuration and technical documentation

Overview

The DataFirefly Notification Center adds a notification bell to the Shopware 6 storefront header, right next to the cart. A red badge shows the number of unread messages (displayed as “9+” beyond nine) and a dropdown panel presents your announcements, new products and promo codes.

The plugin handles three notification types: manually written announcements, product notifications created automatically for every new product (image and link resolved in real time), and promo codes with a one-click “Copy” button. Every notification can be scheduled, targeted by customer group and sales channel, prioritised, and tracked with view and click KPIs.

One plugin, one ZIP, compatible with Shopware 6.5, 6.6 and 6.7 — including the Vite-based administration of 6.7, shipped pre-compiled with no build step.

Requirements

• Shopware 6.5, 6.6 or 6.7 (shopware/core ~6.5 || ~6.6 || ~6.7)
• Command-line access to clear the cache and install assets
• No external dependency, no third-party service

Installation

1. In the administration, go to Extensions → My extensions → Upload extension and select the ZIP.
2. Install and then activate the plugin.
3. Clear the cache and install the assets:

bin/console plugin:refresh
bin/console plugin:install --activate DffNotificationCenter
bin/console assets:install
bin/console cache:clear

Shopware 6.7 (Vite administration)

The administration module ships pre-compiled with a Vite entrypoints.json file. It loads as-is on 6.5, 6.6 and 6.7 with no build step. After each update simply run:

bin/console assets:install
bin/console cache:clear

Configuration

Go to Extensions → My extensions → Notification Center → Configure. Settings are scopable per sales channel.

Notification bell

• Enable the bell (default: yes): shows or hides the bell in the storefront.
• Maximum number of notifications shown (default: 10): clamped between 1 and 50 server-side.
• Background refresh interval (default: 60 s): polling interval, 0 to disable.
• Sound (default: no): plays a sound on a new notification.
• Animation (default: yes): animates the bell when unread notifications exist.

Automatic product notifications

• Create a notification for each new product (default: yes).
• Only for active products (default: yes).
• Automatic expiry (default: 30 days, 0 = never): beyond it, the product notification is no longer delivered.

Automatic promo notifications

• Create a notification when a promotion with a code is created (default: no, must be enabled explicitly).

Managing notifications in the administration

The management module lives under Marketing → Notification Center. There you create, schedule, target and prioritise your announcements, and review view/click KPIs.

Three types are available:

• Announcement (manual): free title, message, button label and link.
• Product (product): linked to a product; the cover image and the link to the product page are resolved in real time on each render — never a broken link.
• Promo code (promo): displays a code with a client-side “Copy” button.

Scheduling, targeting and priority

• Scheduling: validFrom / validUntil dates; a notification outside its window is not delivered.
• Customer-group targeting: limits delivery to a given customer group (empty = all).
• Sales-channel targeting: limits to one channel (empty = all), useful for multi-store setups.
• Priority: integer; higher priorities are shown first, then sorted by creation date descending.

Client-side behaviour

The bell is inserted into the header via a Twig extension (sw_extends). If your theme heavily customises the header, a JavaScript fallback automatically inserts the bell next to the cart.

The panel fetches notifications through an AJAX call. The badge shows the unread count, with optional sound and animation and a configurable background refresh. The interface is accessible: ARIA attributes, keyboard navigation, and a bottom-sheet layout on mobile.

Technical architecture

The plugin follows Shopware conventions: entities declared through the Data Abstraction Layer (DAL), a storefront controller returning JSON, event subscribers and a SQL migration. No override — templates are extended via sw_extends and the code is 100% native.

Entities and the Data Abstraction Layer

The main entity dff_notification (NotificationDefinition) carries the fields: type, active, priority, validFrom, validUntil, customerGroupId, salesChannelId, productId (+ productVersionId), promotionId, promoCode, views and clicks. The translatable fields title, message, buttonLabel and linkUrl are carried by the translation entity dff_notification_translation.

Associations: ManyToOne to customer_group, sales_channel, product and promotion; OneToMany to dff_notification_read (per-customer read state). Definitions are registered with the shopware.entity.definition tag and exposed to the API (ApiAware).

Database schema

The Migration1781049600NotificationCenter migration creates three tables:

• dff_notification: the notification, with indexes on active and on (product_id, product_version_id). Foreign keys to customer_group and sales_channel (ON DELETE SET NULL) and to product (ON DELETE CASCADE).
• dff_notification_translation: per-language translations (title, message, button_label, link_url).
• dff_notification_read: notification/customer pairs, with a unique index on (dff_notification_id, customer_id) to prevent duplicate reads.

Storefront AJAX routes

Routes are declared in XML (Resources/config/routes.xml) to stay compatible from Shopware 6.5 to 6.7 (Symfony 6.x and 7.x). The controller extends AbstractController — not StorefrontController — because it only returns JSON and setTwig() was removed in 6.7.

• GET /dff-nc/list → list(): returns deliverable notifications and increments their views.
• POST /dff-nc/read → markRead(): marks as read server-side (logged-in customers); for guests the response reports client storage.
• POST /dff-nc/click/{id} → click(): increments the click counter.

Delivery logic (list controller)

The DAL query filters notifications with active = true, within their validity window (validFrom ≤ now ≤ validUntil, null bounds allowed), matching the current sales channel (or null) and the current customer group (or null), sorted by priority then creation date descending. Linked products are then resolved dynamically (cover.media association): a product notification whose product is deleted or unavailable in the channel is silently hidden. Views of the notifications actually delivered are incremented in a single query.

Automatic notifications (subscribers)

ProductSubscriber listens to product.written. On every product insert on the live version (variants with a parentId are skipped), and if the option is enabled, it creates a product notification — honouring the “active products only” filter, the configured lifetime (validUntil) and a per-product de-duplication check.

PromotionSubscriber listens to promotion.written. Because the administration first creates the promotion then sets its code and active flag through subsequent updates, it reacts to both inserts and updates. A promo notification is created only if the promotion is active and has a global code, carrying over the promotion’s validFrom/validUntil dates with a per-promotion de-duplication check.

Internationalisation

Three languages ship for both storefront and administration: French, English and German (snippets fr-FR, en-GB, de-DE). Default titles and messages for product and promo notifications are generated via the translation service (dffNc.* keys).

Privacy (GDPR)

The plugin collects no personal data. Guests’ read state stays in their browser (localStorage); logged-in customers’ state is stored server-side and tied to their account. View and click counters are aggregated at notification level, with no individual profiling.

Uninstalling

On uninstall, the dff_notification_read, dff_notification_translation and dff_notification tables are dropped — unless the “keep user data” option is ticked, in which case they are left intact.

Troubleshooting

• The bell does not appear: check that the bell is enabled in the configuration, re-run assets:install and cache:clear, then clear the browser cache. The JS fallback inserts it next to the cart if the theme overrides the header.
• No product notification created: the option must be enabled, the product must be a root product (not a variant) and, if the filter is active, marked active.
• No promo notification created: the option is disabled by default; the promotion must be active and have a global code (individual codes are not broadcast).
• Administration module not loading on 6.7: re-run assets:install then cache:clear and force a browser reload (Ctrl+F5).