I have built an application using phonegap. So far, all of the application features work in both Android and IOS. Now, I would like the app to receive push notifications.
I plan to use Firebase but a friend has warned that FCM can only send push notifications to IOS if a user manually types a message into the FCM console (As in there is no API which would allow my server to send push notifications to IOS manually). The docs haven't helped me prove or refute this warning. Can anyone tell me if I can programmatically send push notifications to IOS using Firebase?
Yes, it is possible to send messages to iOS through Firebase Cloud Messaging through its (server-side) API. You can either just target iOS devices, or send a message to both iOS and Android devices with specific details for each platform.
For full documentation, see https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/send-message.