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 IChatManager and IConversationManager to manage local messages. Followings are the core methods:

IChatManager.LoadAllConversations: Loads the conversation list on the local device.
IChatManage.DeleteConversation: Deletes the specified conversation.
IConversationManager.UnReadCount: Retrieves the count of unread messages in the specified conversation.
IChatManager.GetUnreadMessageCount: Retrieves the count of all unread messages.
IChatManager.DeleteConversationFromServer: Deletes the conversation from the server.
IChatManager.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:

List<Conversation>list = SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.LoadAllConversations();
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Retrieve messages in the specified conversation

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

// Get the specified conversation on the local device.
Conversation conv = SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.GetConversation(conversationId, convType);
// Call LoadMessages to retrieve messages by specifying the `startMsgId` and `pageSize`.
conv.LoadMessages(startMsgId, pagesize, callback:new ValueCallBack<List<Message>>(
  onSuccess: (list) => {
     Debug.Log($"{list.Count} Messages retrieved.");
  },
  onError:(code, desc) => {
     Debug.Log($"Fails to retrieve the message, errCode={code}, errDesc={desc}");
  }
));
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Retrieve the count of unread messages in the specified conversation

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

Conversation conv = SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.GetConversation(conversationId, convType);
int unread = conv.UnReadCount;
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Retrieve the count of unread messages in all conversations

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

SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.GetUnreadMessageCount();
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Mark unread messages as read

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

Conversation conv = SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.GetConversation(conversationId, convType);
// Mark all the messages in the current conversation as read.
conv.MarkAllMessageAsRead();
// Mark the specified message as read.
conv.MarkMessageAsRead(msgId);
// Mark all unread messages as read.
SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.MarkAllConversationsAsRead();
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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 DeleteMessage:

// Call DeleteConversation to delete the specified conversation. 
// `true` indicates to keep the historical messages while deleting the conversation. To remove the historical messages as well, set it as `false`.
SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.DeleteConversation(conversationId, true);
// Delete the specified message in the current conversation.
Conversation conv = SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.GetConversation(conversationId, convType);
conv.DeleteMessage(msgId);
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To delete conversations on the server, call DeleteConversationFromServer:

// Delete a conversation on the server. If you want to keep the historical messages, pass “false” to the third parameter.
SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.DeleteConversationFromServer(conversationId, type, true, new CallBack(
    onSuccess: () => {
    },
    onError: (code, desc) => {
    }
));
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Search for messages using keywords

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

List<Message> list = SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.SearchMsgFromDB(keywords, timeStamp, maxCount, from, MessageSearchDirection.UP);
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Import messages

Call ImportMessages to import multiple messages to the specified conversation. This applies to scenarios where chat users want to formard messages from another conversation.

SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.ImportMessages(messages, new CallBack(
  onSuccess: () => {
  },
  onError: (code, desc) =>
  {
  }
));
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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 the message to the current conversation.
Conversation conv = SDKClient.Instance.ChatManager.GetConversation(conversationId, convType);
conv.InsertMessage(message);
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Next steps

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