Message Actions API for Python-Asyncio SDK

Add or remove actions on published messages to build features like receipts, reactions, or to associate custom metadata to messages. Clients can subscribe to a channel to receive message action events on that channel. They can also fetch past message actions from Message Persistence independently or when they fetch original messages.

Message Actions vs. Message Reactions

Message Actions is the flexible, low-level API for adding any metadata to messages (read receipts, delivery confirmations, custom data), while Message Reactions specifically refers to using Message Actions for emoji/social reactions.

In PubNub Core and Chat SDKs, the same underlying Message Actions API is referred to as Message Reactions when used for emoji reactions - it's the same functionality, just different terminology depending on the use case.

Add Message Reaction

Requires Message Persistence

This method requires that Message Persistence is enabled for your key in the Admin Portal.

Add an action on a published message. Returns the added action in the response.

Method(s)

To Add a Message Action you can use the following method(s) in the Python-asyncio SDK:

pubnub.add_message_action() \
  .channel(String) \
  .message_action(PNMessageAction) \
  .pn_async(Function message_action_callback)

* required

Parameter	Description
channel * Type: String	The channel name to which to add the message action
message_action * Type: PNMessageAction	Message action information
message_action.type * Type: String	What feature this message action represents
message_action.value * Type: String	Value to be stored along with the message action
message_action.message_timetoken * Type: Integer	Timetoken of the message to which to add the action
message_action_callback * Type: Function	Handles returned data for successful and unsuccessful add message action operations. Details on the callback are here

Sample code

Reference code

This example is a self-contained code snippet ready to be run. It includes necessary imports and executes methods with console logging. Use it as a reference when working with other examples in this document.

import asyncio
import os
import time
from pubnub.pnconfiguration import PNConfiguration
from pubnub.pubnub_asyncio import PubNubAsyncio
from pubnub.exceptions import PubNubException
from pubnub.models.consumer.pubsub import PNMessageAction


async def add_message_action(pubnub: PubNubAsyncio):
    try:
        # Create a message action
        msg_action = PNMessageAction()
        msg_action.type = "reaction"
        msg_action.value = "smiley_face"

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Returns

# Example of status
{
  'affected_channels': None,
  'affected_channels_groups': None,
  'affected_groups': None,
  'auth_key': None,
  'category': 2,
  'client_response': None,
  'error': None,
  'error_data': None,
  'operation': 42,
  'origin': 'ps.pndsn.com',
  'status_code': 200,
  'tls_enabled': True,
  'uuid': 'my_uuid'

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Remove Message Reaction

Requires Message Persistence

This method requires that Message Persistence is enabled for your key in the Admin Portal.

Remove a previously added action on a published message. Returns an empty response.

Method(s)

To Remove a Message Action you can use the following method(s) in the JavaScript SDK:

pubnub.remove_message_action() \
  .channel(String) \
  .action_timetoken(Integer) \
  .message_timetoken(Integer) \
  .pn_async(message_action_callback)

* required

Parameter	Description
channel * Type: String	The channel name from which to remove the message action
action_timetoken * Type: Integer	Timetoken of the message action to be removed
message_timetoken * Type: Integer	Timetoken of the message from which to remove the action
message_action_callback * Type: Function	Handles returned data for successful and unsuccessful remove message action operations. Details on the callback are here

Sample code

pubnub.remove_message_action()\
  .channel("chats.room1")\
  .action_timetoken(15956346328442840)\
  .message_timetoken(1595634632)\
  .pn_async(message_action_callback)

Returns

# Example of status
{
  'affected_channels': None,
  'affected_channels_groups': None,
  'affected_groups': None,
  'auth_key': None,
  'category': 2,
  'client_response': None,
  'error': None,
  'error_data': None,
  'operation': 44,
  'origin': 'ps.pndsn.com',
  'status_code': 200,
  'tls_enabled': True,
  'uuid': 'my_uuid'

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Get Message Reactions

Requires Message Persistence

This method requires that Message Persistence is enabled for your key in the Admin Portal.

Get a list of message actions in a channel. Returns a list of actions sorted by the action's timetoken in ascending order.

Method(s)

To Get Message Actions you can use the following method(s) in the Python-asyncio SDK:

pubnub.get_message_actions() \
  .channel(String) \
  .start(String) \
  .end(String) \
  .limit(Integer) \
  .pn_async(message_action_callback)

* required

Parameter	Description
channel * Type: String	The channel name for which to retrieve the list of message actions
start Type: String	Message action timetoken denoting the start of the range requested. Return values will be less than start. If not specified, defaults to the current time.
end Type: String	Message action timetoken denoting the end of the range requested. Return values will be greater than or equal to end. If start is specified, end must be less than or equal to start.
limit Type: Integer	Maximum number of message actions to return in the response. If the number of results exceeds this limit, the results will include a more token. Refer to the REST API documentation for details.
message_action_callback * Type: Function	Handles returned data for successful and unsuccessful retrieve message action operations. Details on the callback are here

Sample code

# Retrieve all actions on a single message

pubnub.get_message_actions()\
  .channel("chats.room1")\
  .start("15956342921084731")\
  .end("15956342921084730")\
  .limit(50)\
  .pn_async(message_action_callback)

Returns

# Example of status
{
  'affected_channels': None,
  'affected_channels_groups': None,
  'affected_groups': None,
  'auth_key': None,
  'category': 2,
  'client_response': None,
  'error': None,
  'error_data': None,
  'operation': 43,
  'origin': 'ps.pndsn.com',
  'status_code': 200,
  'tls_enabled': True,
  'uuid': 'my_uuid'

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PNMessageAction callback

The structure of a PNMessageAction is as follows:

action = PNMessageAction({
        'uuid': 'user1',
        'type': 'reaction',
        'value': 'smiley_face',
        'actionTimetoken': '15901706735798836',
        'messageTimetoken': '15901706735795200',
    })

The following is a sample message_action_callback method you can use as a starting point for your own implementation:

def message_action_callback(envelope, status):
    if status.is_error():
        print("Uh oh. We had a problem sending the message. :( \n %s" % status)
    else:
        if isinstance(envelope, PNAddMessageActionResult):
            print("Message Action type: %s" % envelope.type)
            print("Message Action value: %s" % envelope.value)
            print("Message Action timetoken: %s" % envelope.message_timetoken)
            print("Message Action uuid: %s" % envelope.uuid)
            print("Message Action timetoken: %s" % envelope.action_timetoken)
        elif isinstance(envelope, PNRemoveMessageActionResult):
            # Envelope here is an empty dictionary {}
            pass
        elif isinstance(envelope, PNGetMessageActionsResult):
            print("Message Actions Result:\n")

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