Manage local messages

In chat apps, a conversation is composed of all the messages in a peer-to-peer chat, chat group, or chatroom. The Chat SDK supports managing messages by conversations, including retrieving and managing unread messages, deleting the historical messages on the local device, and searching historical messages.

This page introduces how to use the Chat SDK to implement these functionalities.

Understand the tech

SQLCipher is used to encrypt the database that stores local messages. The Chat SDK uses ChatManager to manage local messages. Followings are the core methods:

loadAllConversations: Loads the conversation list on the local device.
deleteConversation: Deletes the specified conversation locally.
deleteConversationFromServer: Delete a conversation from the server.
Conversation.getUnreadMsgCount: Retrieves the count of unread messages in the specified conversation.
getUnreadMessageCount: Retrieves the count of all unread messages.
searchMsgFromDB: Searches for messages from the local database.
Conversation.insertMessage: Inserts messages in the specified conversation.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure that you meet the following requirements:

You have integrated the Chat SDK, initialized the SDK and implemented the functionality of registering accounts and login. For details, see Chat SDK quickstart.
You understand the API call frequency limits as described in Limitations.

Implementation

This section shows how to implement managing messages.

Retrieve conversations

Call loadAllConversations to retrieve all the conversations on the local device:

Map<String, Conversation> conversations = ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().getAllConversations();

Retrieve messages in the specified conversation

Refer to the following code sample to retrieve the messages in the specified conversation:

Conversation conversation = ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().getConversation(username);
// Gets all the messages in the current conversation.
List<ChatMessage> messages = conversation.getAllMessages();
// Only one message is loaded during SDK initialization. Call loadMoreMsgFromDB to retrieve more messages.
List<ChatMessage> messages = conversation.loadMoreMsgFromDB(startMsgId, pagesize);

Retrieve the count of unread messages in the specified conversation

Refer to the following code example to retrieve the count of unread messages:

Conversation conversation = ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().getConversation(username);
conversation.getUnreadMsgCount();

Retrieve the count of unread messages in all conversations

Refer to the following code example to retrieve the count of all unread messages:

ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().getUnreadMessageCount();

Mark unread messages as read

Refer to the following code example to mark the specified messages as read:

Conversation conversation = ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().getConversation(username);
// Mark all the messages in the current conversation as read.
conversation.markAllMessagesAsRead();
// Mark the specified message as read.
conversation.markMessageAsRead(messageId);
// Mark all unread messages as read.
ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().markAllConversationsAsRead();

Delete conversations and historical messages

You can delete conversations on both the local device and the server.

To delete them on the local device, call deleteConversation and removeMessage:

// true indicates to keep the historical messages while deleting the conversation. To remove the historical messages as well, set it as true.
ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().deleteConversation(username, true);
// Delete the specified message in the current conversation.
Conversation conversation = ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().getConversation(username);
conversation.removeMessage(deleteMsg.msgId);

To delete a conversation on the server, call DeleteConversationFromServer:

ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().deleteConversationFromServer(conversationId, conversationType, isDeleteServerMessages, new CallBack() {
    @Override
    public void onSuccess() {
        
    }
    @Override
    public void onError(int code, String error) {
    }
});

Search for messages using keywords

Call searchMsgFromDB to search for messages by keywords, timestamp, and message sender:

List<ChatMessage> messages = conversation.searchMsgFromDB(keywords, timeStamp, maxCount, from, Conversation.SearchDirection.UP);

Import messages

Call importMessages to import multiple messages to the local database.

ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().importMessages(msgs);

Insert messages

If you want to insert a message to the current conversation without actually sending the message, construct the message body and call insertMessage. This can be used to send notification messages such as "XXX recalls a message", "XXX joins the chat group", and "Typing ...".

// Insert a message to the specified conversation.
Conversation conversation = ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().getConversation(username);
conversation.insertMessage(message);
// Insert a message.
ChatClient.getInstance().chatManager().saveMessage(message);

Next steps

After implementing managing messages, you can refer to the following documents to add more messaging functionalities to your app: