@prk/react-web-chat

v1.6.12

Published

2 years ago

react-web-chat React component

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react-web-chat

react-web-chat is an instant messaging UI built with React.

Installation

Simply install it with your favorite package manager:

npm install --save-dev react-web-chat yarn add react-web-chat

Usage

As a stand-alone module

The stand-alone version of the module will render to a supplied dom element. It accepts the following parameters:

| Argument | Description | Required | Type | | ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------- | ------- | | url | The url of your chat server | yes | String | | element | The element react-web-chat should render to | yes | Element | | theme | A custom theme | no | Object | | client | A custom client | no | Object | | typingStatus | Configuration options for the typing status indicator. Note! This delay will be a compounded value as per all the settings you provide. | no | Object | | network | Configuration options for network communication of the default Feersum Client (NOTE! Required if using the default client, channel_id field must also be specified else the Feersum Client connection will fail! See below example.) | no | Object | | toggleComponent | Provide any element to toggle the chat view. This can be used in cases where the chat should be minimised | no | Element |

Communication with the module is handled via custom events described here.

Fully configured example

new ReactWebChat({
    url: 'http://localhost:8000',
    element: myChatElement,
    typingStatus: {
        active: true || false,              // Enable/disable typing status indicator (default = true)
        baseDelay: 500,                     // How many ms to show the indicator for (default = 750)
        variance: 250,                      // How many ms to vary the delay by (default = 250)
        letterDelay: 30,                    // How many ms to add for each letter in a message (default = 20)
        minDelay: 200,                      // The minimum delay allowed. (default = 200)
        maxDelay: 3000                      // The maximum delay allowed. (default = 3000)
    },
    network: {
        channel_id: 'f8472758-f804-4a7e-a225-5e303e121099',         // The required channel_id for the default feersum client.
        address: 'a6424358-g73g-7h8d-92m8-6s890g5892n07',         // An optional address to specify.
        startNew: true,         // Specify if the chat is a new instance.
        retransmissionTimeout: 500,         // How many ms to wait between network request retries compounded by the amount of attempts already past.
        retransmissionTimeoutMax: 1000,     // The maximum compounded wait in ms between network connection requests.
        retransmissionAttempts: 10,         // Retry limit
        eventNamespace: "rwc"               // Custom even namespace
    }
}

});

ES6

import ReactWebChat from 'react-web-chat';
let myChatElement = document.getElementByID('my-chat-element');

const reactWebChat = new ReactWebChat({
    url: 'http://localhost:8000',
    element: myChatElement
});

CommonJS

var ReactWebChat = require('react-web-chat').default;
var myChatElement = document.getElementByID('my-chat-element');

var reactWebChat = new ReactWebChat({
    url: 'http://localhost:8000',
    element: myChatElement
});

UMD

react-web-chat is also available as a UMD module. Simply load the module and instantiate a new instance as described in the example below. NOTE: react and react-dom are peer dependencies so make sure they are loaded too

<html>
    <head>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/react-web-chat/umd/main.css"/>
        <script crossorigin src="https://unpkg.com/react/umd/react.production.min.js"></script>
        <script crossorigin src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom/umd/react-dom.production.min.js"></script>
        <script src="https://unpkg.com/@prk/react-web-chat/umd/@prk/react-web-chat.min.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="my-chat-element">
        <script>
            var myChatElement = document.getElementById('my-chat-element');

            var reactWebChat = new ReactWebChat({
                url: "https://dev.feersum.io/chat_sockjs",
                element: myChatElement,
                network: {
                    channel_id: '3998e8a9-b329-4de9-a03c-040cc0348e42'
                }
            });
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

As a react component

The exported ReactWebChatComponent can be used within an existing react application. It accepts the following parameters:

| Argument | Description | Required | Type | | -------- | ---------------------------------- | -------- | ------ | | url | The url of your chat server | yes | String | | theme | A custom theme | no | Object | | client | A custom client | no | Object |

Example

import { ReactWebChatComponent } from 'react-web-chat';

const MyComponent = props => (
    <div>
        <ReactWebChatComponent url="http://localhost:8080" />
    </div>
);

Custom events

Communication with the react-web-chat module is handled via a series of custom events.

Listening

Custom react-web-chat events are namespaced using the rwc- prefix.

Any dispatched redux action will fire a custom event using the following type: rwc-ACTION_TYPE

Example:

window.addEventListener('rwc-MESSAGE_RECEIVE', function(data) {
    // do something with data
});

The data parameter object adheres to the CustomEvent specification: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CustomEvent

A full list of actions to listen for:

rwc-MESSAGE_ADD
rwc-MESSAGE_SEND
rwc-MESSAGE_RECEIVE
rwc-MESSAGE_QUEUE
rwc-CONNECTION_ESTABLISHED
rwc-CONNECTION_ATTEMPTED
rwc-CONNECTION_DROPPED
rwc-CONNECTION_LISTENING

Note: event namespaces can be configured by passing in the following configuration to the constructor:
new ReactWebChat({
   /* ... */
   network: {
       eventNamespace: "your-custom-namespace"
   }
}
This will result in the following event type: your-custom-namespace-ACTION_TYPE

Dispatching

Dispatching an event follows the same namespaced convention as described above. However not all redux actions can be dispatched via custom events. Currently only the MESSAGE_SEND action type is supported. More action types may be supported in future releases if justifiable use cases can be demonstrated.

Example:

function sendRWCMessage() {
    var rwcEvent = window.CustomEvent('rwc-MESSAGE_SEND', {
        detail: {
            payload: message
        }
    });
    window.dispatchEvent(rwcEvent);
}

var message = {
    type: 'message',
    layout: 'plain',
    pages: [
        {
            text: 'Hello world'
        }
    ]
};

sendRWCMessage(message);

Custom themes

react-web-chat allows you to inject custom react components for specific parts of the UI. Any components not specified in the custom theme object will use the default theme's components.

The following components can be overridden:

AvatarComponent
ButtonComponent
CheckboxMenuComponent
ImageComponent
InputComponent
MenuComponent
TextComponent
TypingIndicatorComponent

Please consult the API documentation as a guide to help you develop custom components for your themes.

Example

import { ReactWebChatComponent } from 'react-web-chat';

// your custom theme components
import React from 'react';
import Avatar from './customTheme/Avatar';
import Button from './customTheme/Button';
import Input from './customTheme/Input';

const MyComponent = props => (
    <div>
        <ReactWebChatComponent
            url="http://localhost:8080"
            theme={{
                AvatarComponent: Avatar,
                ButtonComponent: Button,
                InputComponent: Input
            }}
        />
    </div>
);

Custom network clients

react-web-chat supports custom network clients to manage network communication with your server.

Network clients have the following responsibilities:

determine which protocol/standard to use (WS, socket.io, HTTP, XHR, Fetch, etc.)
translate messages to a format the server understands

Currently the only available client is rwc-feersum-client.

It's also the default client used by react-web-chat which happens to make use the feersum message schema. Further reading:

In future there will hopefully be several clients to support a wider range of IM back-ends.

Writing your own network client

Writing a custom network client is easy :) All you need is an object with the following methods:

const feersumClient = {
    init(url) {
        // Connect to server, then bind "onmessage" and "onclose" methods.
    },

    send(message) {
        // Translate message from feersum schema, then send to server.
    },

    onmessage(fn) {
        // Translate message to feersum schema, then execute callback function with message as parameter.
    },

    onclose(fn) {
        // Execute callback when the connection is closed.
    }
};

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Readme

react-web-chat

Table of contents

Installation

Usage

As a stand-alone module

Fully configured example

ES6

CommonJS

UMD

As a react component

Example

Custom events

Listening

Example:

Dispatching

Example:

Custom themes

Example

Custom network clients

Writing your own network client