useUser for PubNub Chat Components for React

Migrate to Chat SDK

PubNub will stop supporting Chat Components on January 1, 2025 but you are welcome to contribute. Learn how to migrate to the Chat SDK here.

The hook returns metadata for a specified User ID, optionally including its custom data object.

User ID / UUID

User ID is also referred to as UUID/uuid in some APIs and server responses but holds the value of the userId parameter you set during initialization.

This hook also sets up a listener that will react to updates of the fetched user. However, this behavior requires a living subscription to the user getting updated - this should be handled by the components.

This hook can be used in order not to fetch data about all users of the application. Instead, only the current user metadata is passed into the Chat provider and the senderInfo option is enabled on MessageInput. This way the information about the senders is attached directly to the messages.

const [user, error, isLoading] = useUser({ uuid: "user" });

return (
  <Chat users={[user]}>
    <MessageInput senderInfo={true} />
  </Chat>
);

Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Defaults	Description
uuid	String	Optional	current User ID	Unique user identifier. If not supplied, the current user's User ID is used.
include	Object	Optional	n/a	Option to include respective additional fields in the response.
→ customFields	Boolean	Optional	false	Option to fetch custom fields.

Output

Parameter	Type	Description
array[0]	User	Metadata of the user.
array[1]	Error	If there's an error fetching the user, it will be available here.
array[2]	Boolean	Indicator that the user data is still being loaded.