I am sending a notification to a user and want to return a value to know if the notification was sent successfully or not.

The notification is a FCM push notification, and there are multiple reasons why it could fail and need to act accordingly based on the success/failure.

I call the notification from a controller like this:

$return = $user->notify(new AlertNotification([
            'title' => $data['title'],
            'body' => $data['body'],
            'url' => $data['url'],
            'method' => $data['method'],
            'token' => $token,
            'sound' => $sound
        ]));

The notification works succesfully, but there is nothing in the $return variable.

Here is the notification code:

    public function toFirebase($notifiable)
    {
        if ($this->token) {
            $firebaseMessage = (new FirebaseMessage)
                ->fromRaw([
                    'message' => [
                        "data" => [
                            'deeplink' => $this->url
                        ],
                        "notification" => [
                            "title" => $this->title,
                            'body' => $this->body,
                        ],
                        "android" => [
                            'collapse_key' => 'general_key',
                            "ttl" => "86400s",
                            'notification' => [
                                'sound' => $this->sound ? 'sound.wav' : null,
                                'channel_id' => 'alert-channel',
                                'notification_count' => 1
                            ]
                        ],
                        "apns" => [
                            "payload" => [
                                'aps' => [
                                    'sound' => $this->sound ? 'alert_sound.wav' : null,
                                    'badge' => 1
                                ]
                            ]
                        ],
                        "token" => $this->token,
                    ]
                    ]
                )->asNotification();

            if ($firebaseMessage) {

                $statusCode = $firebaseMessage->status();

                if (in_array($statusCode,[400,403])) {

                    Log::error('The Firebase Message returned a 400 error for token: '.$this->token.' message: '.print_r($firebaseMessage,true));
                    return false;

                } else if ($statusCode === 200) {
                    return true;

                } else {
                    Log::error('The Firebase Message returned an known status: '.$statusCode.' for token: '.$this->token.' message: '.print_r($firebaseMessage,true));
                    return false;
                }

            } else
                return null;

        } else
            return false;
    }

The notification is successful, and should return true, but no value is returned. Can someone help me understand how to get a return value from a notification?