Chat object

Once you initialize the Chat SDK and create its instance, you'll get immediate access to the Chat entity from which you can call the PubNub server.

To communicate with PubNub, you can use various methods. For example, you can use deleteChannel() to remove a given channel or wherePresent() to check which channels a given user is subscribed to.

By calling methods on the ChatImpl object, you create further objects like Channel, User, Message, Membership, ThreadChannel, and ThreadMessage. These objects also expose Chat API under various methods, letting you perform CRUD operations on messages, channels, users, the related user-channel membership, and many more.

Each of these entities comes with a set of "read-only" parameters you define when creating, modifying, and deleting specific channels, users, messages, or memberships in your chat app.

Properties

The ChatImpl class implements the Chat protocol and takes the following properties:

public final class ChatImpl {
  public let pubnub: PubNub
  public let config: ChatConfiguration
}

Parameter	Description
pubnub Type: PubNub	Initialized instance of the PubNub Swift SDK. pubnub lets you access any Swift SDK method. For example, if you want to call a method available in the App Context API, you'd use chat.pubnub.getAllUUIDMetadata().
→ configuration Type: PubNubConfiguration	Mandatory PubNub configuration parameters.
→ publishKey Type: String	Specifies the key used to publish messages on a channel.
→ subscribeKey Type: String	Specifies the key used to subscribe to a channel.
→ userId Type: String	Unique User ID that becomes your app's current user. It's a string of up to 92 characters that identifies a single client (end user, device, or server) that connects to PubNub. Based on User ID, PubNub calculates pricing for your apps' usage. User ID should be persisted and remain unchanged. If you don't set userId, you won't be able to connect to PubNub.
config Type: ChatConfiguration	ChatConfiguration contains chat app configuration settings, such as saveDebugLog or typingTimeout that you provide when initializing your chat app with the init() method. You can later directly access these properties, like: chat.storeUserActivityInterval.

ChatConfiguration includes these properties:

public struct ChatConfiguration {
  public var logLevel: LogLevel
  public var typingTimeout: Int
  public var storeUserActivityInterval: Int
  public var storeUserActivityTimestamps: Bool
  public var pushNotificationsConfig: PushNotificationsConfig
  public var rateLimitFactor: Int
  public var rateLimitPerChannel: [ChannelType: Int64]
  public var customPayloads: CustomPayloads?
}

PushNotificationsConfig includes these properties:

public struct PushNotificationsConfig {
  public var sendPushes: Bool
  public var deviceToken: String?
  public var deviceGateway: PubNub.PushService
  public var apnsTopic: String?
  public var apnsEnvironment: PubNub.PushEnvironment
}

To initialize the Swift Chat SDK, you must provide two parameters: subscribeKey, and userId, while all other settings (mentioned above) are optional. Read the Configuration page for details.

Methods

You can call the following methods on the Chat object.

Click on each method for more details.

• createUser()
• createDirectConversation()
• createGroupConversation()
• createPublicConversation()
• currentUser
• deleteChannel()
• deleteUser()
• emitEvent()
• getEventsHistory()
• getChannel()
• getChannels()
• getCurrentUserMentions()
• getUnreadMessagesCounts()
• getUser()
• getUsers()
• getPushChannels()
• init()
• isPresent()
• listenForEvents()
• markAllMessagesAsRead
• registerPushChannels()
• unregisterPushChannels()
• unregisterAllPushChannels()
• updateChannel()
• updateUser()
• wherePresent()
• whoIsPresent()

Use case

For example, you can use the Chat-related methods to:

• Create a channel or user.
• Get channel or user data.