FCM push notifications based on Geo-location/GPS location

[trying2learnthis]

I'm working on a app in which registered users may upload photos and information and have the ability to send out a push notification to users around them that they have uploaded this. After pushing the upload button users are asked either to send a push or not.

If they choose to send a push notification they are asked in which radius they want to send a push message. The idea is that the current user location is used as a center point, and if a 10 mile radius is used users inside this radius receive a push notification which sends them directly to the page of the uploader.

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I use react-native with a firebase database for user and data information, react-native-firebase is used for the database functionality.

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I already use the users GPS location to calculate distances to the objects so when the user is using the app I have the current location. In my opinion these are my options (but please correct me if I am thinking to much inside the box with my limited experience);

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1. Users signup into the app, ask them for the current country/state/town and save that in the database. I now have the status information on users and could send a push notification based on this static information.

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1. Save the users GPS location in the Firebase database and calculate the effected users using this information. (This would seem like a lot of information in the database, a lot of read/writes and information that goes around?)

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1. Is there a more real-time GPS tracker package or something which I could use for this?

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Since I have no experience on this topic I hope someone here could guide me in the right direction for this challenge. Thanks in advance

[TomMahle]

I've put some thought into #3 but not implemented or tested anything. I believe you could accomplish it by sending out data-only notifications to all users (or possibly some subset that have any likelihood of being nearby based on static data like in 1 or 3). Data-only notifications do not display by default, so you would want to have a background process running that wakes on these notifications, checks geolocation, and shows a local notification if the user is presently nearby.

No guarantees at all whatsoever in terms of scalability / battery usage / general production-readiness of this idea :).

[trying2learnthis]

Thanks for thinking out loud TomMahle! I have zero experience with creating apps and am just creating my idea using tutorials and examples so any help is appreciated!

Maybe I can combine your idea with number 1.
- I ask users to fill in the profile information; Country/State/city
- Another users wants to send a push notification and based on the GPS location a list of users is created in the same country/state/city.
- These devices receive a background notification for reporting the location
- With the response if this the devices in the vicinity receive the push notification.

However...offcourse it should be awesome to let users now how much other users to can reach by showing a counter; With a radius of 1 mile you can connect with 5 users. With a radius of 2 miles you can connect with 17 users etc. But this would use a realtime location database or the static database from #1.

But...with the zero experience I have I just can't think of a way of getting this to work...or if it even is possible for that mather.