What is stream-chat?
The stream-chat npm package is a powerful tool for building chat applications. It provides a comprehensive set of features for real-time messaging, user management, and chat room creation, among others. It is designed to be highly customizable and scalable, making it suitable for a wide range of applications from simple chat widgets to complex messaging platforms.
What are stream-chat's main functionalities?
Real-time Messaging
This feature allows you to send real-time messages in a chat channel. The code sample demonstrates how to initialize the StreamChat client, create a channel, and send a message.
const StreamChat = require('stream-chat').StreamChat;
const client = new StreamChat('api_key');
async function sendMessage() {
const channel = client.channel('messaging', 'general', {
name: 'General Chat',
});
await channel.create();
await channel.sendMessage({
text: 'Hello, world!',
user_id: 'user123',
});
}
sendMessage();
User Management
This feature allows you to manage users within the chat application. The code sample demonstrates how to create or update a user with specific attributes.
const StreamChat = require('stream-chat').StreamChat;
const client = new StreamChat('api_key');
async function createUser() {
await client.upsertUser({
id: 'user123',
name: 'John Doe',
role: 'user',
});
}
createUser();
Channel Management
This feature allows you to manage chat channels. The code sample demonstrates how to create a new chat channel with a specific name and type.
const StreamChat = require('stream-chat').StreamChat;
const client = new StreamChat('api_key');
async function createChannel() {
const channel = client.channel('messaging', 'general', {
name: 'General Chat',
});
await channel.create();
}
createChannel();
Message Reactions
This feature allows users to add reactions to messages. The code sample demonstrates how to send a message and then add a 'like' reaction to that message.
const StreamChat = require('stream-chat').StreamChat;
const client = new StreamChat('api_key');
async function addReaction() {
const channel = client.channel('messaging', 'general');
await channel.create();
const message = await channel.sendMessage({
text: 'Hello, world!',
user_id: 'user123',
});
await channel.sendReaction(message.id, {
type: 'like',
user_id: 'user123',
});
}
addReaction();
Other packages similar to stream-chat
socket.io
Socket.IO is a library that enables real-time, bidirectional and event-based communication between web clients and servers. While it is more general-purpose and can be used for various real-time applications, it requires more manual setup for chat-specific features compared to stream-chat.
pusher-js
Pusher is a service that provides APIs for building real-time web and mobile applications. Pusher Channels specifically can be used for real-time messaging, but it lacks some of the higher-level abstractions and features specifically tailored for chat applications that stream-chat offers.
firebase
Firebase is a platform developed by Google for creating mobile and web applications. Firebase Realtime Database and Firestore can be used to build real-time chat applications. However, Firebase is a more general-purpose backend-as-a-service and may require more custom development to achieve the same level of chat-specific functionality provided by stream-chat.
Stream Chat JS
stream-chat-js is the official JavaScript client for Stream Chat, a service for building chat applications.
You can sign up for a Stream account at https://getstream.io/chat/get_started/.
Installation
Install with NPM
npm install stream-chat
Install with Yarn
yarn add stream-chat
Using JS deliver
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/stream-chat"></script>
API Documentation
Documentation for this JavaScript client are available at the Stream website
Publishing a new version
Note that you need 2FA enabled on NPM, publishing with Yarn gives error, use NPM directly for this:
npm version bug
npm publish
Contributing
We welcome code changes that improve this library or fix a problem, please make sure to follow all best practices and add tests if applicable before submitting a Pull Request on Github. We are very happy to merge your code in the official repository. Make sure to sign our Contributor License Agreement (CLA) first. See our license file for more details.