An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

https://github.com/peterkottas/react-bell-chat

:bell: Easy to use chat user interface for React
https://github.com/peterkottas/react-bell-chat

chat chat-application chatapp react reactjs ux-ui

Last synced: about 1 year ago
JSON representation

:bell: Easy to use chat user interface for React

Awesome Lists containing this project

README

          

# :bell: react-bell-chat

A library of React components for building chat UIs.

# DEMO

[Live demo](https://peterkottas.github.io/react-bell-chat/)

[![NPM](https://nodei.co/npm/react-bell-chat.png?downloads=true&downloadRank=true&stars=true)](https://nodei.co/npm/react-bell-chat/)

## Features

* Chat like scroll behavior (eg. automatic scroll to bottom)
* Load more messages on scrolling to the top (with custom threshold)
* SUPER easy to use
* Customize anything
* Author avatars
* Last seen messages for each author
* Show if authors are typing or not
* Automatic date rows (when the following message is from a different date than the preceding one)

Keep in mind that this project is still in the early stages of development. If you encounter a bug or have a feature request, please create an issue.

## Installation

`npm install react-bell-chat --save`

OR

`yarn add react-bell-chat`

## Basic Usage

```typescript
import { ChatFeed } from 'react-bell-chat'

// Your code stuff...

render() {

return (

// Your JSX...

// Your JSX...

)

}
```

The bare minimum is to provide a list of messages and authors, check this out for an example:

```typescript
//...
this.state = {
messages: [
{
id: 1,
authorId: 1,
message: "Sample message",
createdOn: new Date(),
isSend: true
},
{
id: 2,
authorId: 2,
message: "Second sample message",
createdOn: new Date(),
isSend: false
},
],
authors: [
{
id: 1,
name: 'Mark',
isTyping: true,
lastSeenMessageId: 1,
bgImageUrl: undefined
},
{
id: 2,
name: 'Peter',
isTyping: false,
lastSeenMessageId: 2,
bgImageUrl: undefined
}
]
};
//...
```

Complete props for author:

typescript
```
export interface Author {
id: number;
name: string;
avatarName?: string;
lastSeenAvatarName?: string;
isTyping?: boolean;
lastSeenMessageId?: number;
bgImageUrl?: number;
}
```

Complete props for message:

typescript
```
export interface Message {
id?: number;
authorId?: number; // If undefined, message is considered to be "System message"
message: string;
createdOn?: Date;
isSend?: boolean;
}
```

## API

Api is obtained as ref of the ChatFeed component. It's divided in 2 parts, feedApi and scrollApi. Ref gives you and object like this:
```typescript
interface ChatFeedApi {
onMessageSend: () => void; // Should be called when user sends a message (this scrolls the component down)
scrollApi: ChatScrollAreaApi;
}
```

Where scroll api is

```typescript
interface ChatScrollAreaApi {
scrollToBottom: (behavior?: ScrollBehavior) => void;
scrollTo: (top: number) => void;
scrolledToBottom: () => boolean; // Check if we are scrolled to bottom
scrolledToLoadThreshold: () => boolean; // Check if we are scrolled to threshold where we need to load messages
}
```

## Whole list of properties

```typescript
export interface ChatFeedProps {
// Structural props
className?: string;

// Functional props
messages: Message[];
authors: Author[];
yourAuthorId: number;
hasOldMessages?: boolean;
loadOldMessagesThreshold?: number;

// Visual props
bubblesCentered?: boolean;
bubbleStyles?: ChatBubbleStyles;
maxHeight?: string | number;
minHeight?: string | number;

// Switches
showDateRow?: boolean;
showRecipientAvatar?: boolean;
showRecipientLastSeenMessage?: boolean;
showIsTyping?: boolean;
showLoadingMessages?: boolean;

// Extra container styles for custom components
showRecipientAvatarChatMessagesStyle?: React.CSSProperties;
showRecipientLastSeenMessageChatMessagesStyle?: React.CSSProperties;
showIsTypingChatMessagesStyle?: React.CSSProperties;

// Custom components
customLoadingMessages?: (props: LoadingMessagesProps) => JSX.Element;
customChatBubble?: (props: ChatBubbleProps) => JSX.Element;
customSystemChatBubble?: (props: ChatBubbleProps) => JSX.Element;
customAvatar?: (props: AvatarProps) => JSX.Element;
customScrollArea?: (props: ChatScrollAreaProps) => JSX.Element;
customIsTyping?: (props: ChatScrollAreaProps) => JSX.Element;
customLastSeenAvatar?: (props: LastSeenAvatarProps) => JSX.Element;
customDateRow?: (props: DateRowProps) => JSX.Element;

// Callbacks
onLoadOldMessages?: () => Promise; // Make sure to return promise that only resolves after state is updated.

ref?: (api: ChatFeedApi) => void;
}
```

## Custom components

Most of the UI is customizable via injecting custom components. These are pure components, the library injects props to them so that you can customize pretty much anything.

## FAQ

Q: My chat is scrolling up/down automatically every time I use setState on parent component.

A: Make sure to provide const expressions for custom components. Not inline functions.

## Created and sponsored by

- [GuestBell](https://guestbell.com/) - Customer centric online POS for Hotels and short terms stays.

## Contributing 🔧

Contributions are always welcomed and encouraged.

## Development

```sh
npm run start
```

## Acknowledgments

This lib started as a fork from https://github.com/brandonmowat/react-chat-ui