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First steps

  • Set up your account
  • Get the SDK
  • Initialize PubNub
  • Identify users and devices
  • Send messages
  • Receive messages
  • Retrieve old messages
  • Check user presence
  • Add custom metadata
  • Manage access
  • Add serverless business logic
  • Send push notifications

Setup

  • PubNub account
  • Application
  • Users & devices
  • Connection management
  • Data security
  • Data persistence
  • API limits

Chat

  • In-App Chat

SDKs

  • SDKs

Messages

  • Publish
  • Receive
  • Actions
  • Payload type conventions

Channels

  • Basics
  • Subscription
  • Naming conventions

User presence

  • Basics
  • Events
  • State
  • Webhooks

Metadata

  • Channel
  • User
  • Membership

Message Persistence

  • Message Persistence

File sharing

  • File sharing

Access management

  • Manage access

Push notifications

  • Basics
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Troubleshooting

Best practices

  • Architectural choices
  • Message aggregation
  • Friend list & status feed
  • Troubleshooting
  • Migration guides

Serverless processing

    EVENTS & ACTIONS

    • Basics
    • Configure Events & Actions

    FUNCTIONS

    • Basics
    • Development guidelines
    • Functions API
    • Custom integrations

Debug Console
Network Status

Identify users and devices

Firstly, setting a universally unique identifier (UUID) in the client configuration is required to establish a connection to PubNub. If you don't provide a valid UUID (String up to 64 characters), you won't be able to use PubNub.

Secondly, UUIDs are used to identify a client, which might be an end user, a device, or a server. A single user (a real living person) might have multiple devices (phone, tablet, laptop) so it's important to understand the relationship between them. Moreover, features which determine user's online presence rely on UUIDs.

Finally, UUIDs are essential to correctly calculate your bill according to the Monthly Active User (MAU) pricing model, which is based on the number of unique users that connect to PubNub at least once in a calendar month.

With your account created and SDK configured, it's time to start sending messages.

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