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Version: v4

Overview

This guide demonstrates how to add real-time Ionic chat to a Cordova/Ionic application using CometChat.

Before you begin, we strongly recommend you read the Key Concepts guide.

Get your Application Keys​

Signup for CometChat and then:

  1. Create a new app
  2. Head over to the API & Auth Keys section and note the Auth Key, App ID & Region

Add the CometChat Dependency​

Install the package as NPM module:

npm install @cometchat/chat-sdk-ionic
Note

The Calling Component (@cometchat/calls-sdk-ionic) is a capacitor plugin so it won't work in a Cordova project.

Calling Component Configuration​

Android

Goto ./android folder and open project-level build Gradle file and add all repository URLs in the repositories block under the allprojects section.

allprojects {
repositories {
  maven {
      url "https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/cometchat/cometchat/maven/"
  }
}
}

You also need to update the minimum SDK version to 24. You can update the minSDKVersion in the variables.gradle file located in the android folder.

minSdkVersion = 24

For capacitor v2, you need to add the Calling Plugin in the Main Activity. The below changes are not required for capacitor v3 & above.

package io.ionic.starter;

import android.os.Bundle;

import com.cometchat.calling.Calling; //Add this line

import com.getcapacitor.BridgeActivity;
import com.getcapacitor.Plugin;

import java.util.ArrayList;

public class MainActivity extends BridgeActivity {
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  this.init(savedInstanceState, new ArrayList<Class<? extends Plugin>>() {{
    add(Calling.class);
  }});
}
}

iOS:

Please update the minimum target version in the Podfile. Goto ./ios/App folder and open the Podfile.

platform :ios, '12.0'

Open the ios/App folder and run pod install this will create an App.xcworkspace open this and run the app.

Initialize CometChat​

The init() method initialises the settings required for CometChat. The init() method takes the below parameters:

  1. appId - Your CometChat App ID
  2. appSettings - An object of the AppSettings class can be created using the AppSettingsBuilder class. The region field is mandatory and can be set using the setRegion() method.

The AppSettings class allows you to configure two settings:

  • Region: The region where you app was created.
  • Presence Subscription: Represents the subscription type for user presence (real-time online/offline status)
  • autoEstablishSocketConnection(boolean value): This property takes a boolean value which when set to true informs the SDK to manage the web-socket connection internally. If set to false , it informs the SDK that the web-socket connection will be managed manually. The default value for this parameter is true. For more information on this, please check the Managing connections manually section. The default value for this property is true.
  • overrideAdminHost(adminHost: string): This method takes the admin URL as input and uses this admin URL instead of the default admin URL. This can be used in case of dedicated deployment of CometChat.
  • overrideClientHost(clientHost: string): This method takes the client URL as input and uses this client URL instead of the default client URL. This can be used in case of dedicated deployment of CometChat.

You need to call init() before calling any other method from CometChat. We suggest you call the init() method on app startup, preferably in the index.js file.

var appID = "APP_ID";
var region = "REGION";
var appSetting = new CometChat.AppSettingsBuilder()
  .subscribePresenceForAllUsers()
  .setRegion(region)
  .autoEstablishSocketConnection(true)
  .build();
CometChat.init(appID, appSetting).then(
  () => {
    console.log("Initialization completed successfully");
  },
  (error) => {
    console.log("Initialization failed with error:", error);
  }
);

Make sure you replace the APP_ID with your CometChat App ID and REGION with your App Region in the above code.

Register and Login your user​

Once initialization is successful, you will need to create a user. To create users on the fly, you can use the createUser() method. This method takes a User object and the Auth Key as input parameters and returns the created User object if the request is successful.

let authKey = "AUTH_KEY";
var uid = "user1";
var name = "Kevin";

var user = new CometChat.User(uid);

user.setName(name);

CometChat.createUser(user, authKey).then(
  (user) => {
    console.log("user created", user);
  },
  (error) => {
    console.log("error", error);
  }
);

Make sure that UID and name are specified as these are mandatory fields to create a user.

Once you have created the user successfully, you will need to log the user into CometChat using the login() method.

We recommend you call the CometChat login() method once your user logs into your app. The login() method needs to be called only once.

info

This straightforward authentication method is ideal for proof-of-concept (POC) development or during the early stages of application development. For production environments, however, we strongly recommend using an Auth Token instead of an Auth Key to ensure enhanced security.

var UID = "cometchat-uid-1";
var authKey = "AUTH_KEY";

CometChat.getLoggedinUser().then(
  (user) => {
    if (!user) {
      CometChat.login(UID, authKey).then(
        (user) => {
          console.log("Login Successful:", { user });
        },
        (error) => {
          console.log("Login failed with exception:", { error });
        }
      );
    }
  },
  (error) => {
    console.log("Some Error Occured", { error });
  }
);

Make sure you replace the AUTH_KEY with your CometChat Auth Key in the above code.

Sample Users

We have set-up 5 users for testing having UIDs: cometchat-uid-1, cometchat-uid-2, cometchat-uid-3, cometchat-uid-4 and cometchat-uid-5.

The login() method returns the User object containing all the information of the logged-in user.

Warning

UID can be alphanumeric with underscore and hyphen. Spaces, punctuation and other special characters are not allowed.