react-web-chat

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

Table of contents

* Table of contents
* Installation
* Usage
* As a stand-alone module
* As a react component
* Custom events
* Listening
* Dispatching
* Custom themes
* Custom network clients

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 |

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

$3

``js
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
}
}

});
`

$3

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

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

$3

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

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

$3

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






`

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 |

$3

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

const MyComponent = props => (



);
`

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

$3

`js
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:
>
> `js
> 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.

$3

`js
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.

$3

`jsx
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 => (



);
`

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:

* Feersum Engine
* Feersum 0.9 Schema

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:

`js
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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