vue-advanced-chat

Features

• Realtime chat messaging
• Customizeable
• Backend agnostic
• Images, files & emojis
• Firestore example

Demo

Enjoy 😄

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Props API
• Props data structure
• Events API
• Using with Firestore

Installation

# Using npm
npm install --save vue-advanced-chat

# Using yarn
yarn add --save vue-advanced-chat

Usage

You can import it as a custom component:

<template>
  <chat-window :rooms="rooms" :messages="messages" />
</template>

<script>
  import ChatWindow from 'vue-advanced-chat'
  import 'vue-advanced-chat/dist/vue-advanced-chat.css'

  export default {
    components: {
      ChatWindow
    },
    data() {
      return {
        userId: '1234'
        rooms: [],
        messages: []
      }
    }
  }
</script>

Props API

Prop	Type	Required	Default
height	String	-	600px
rooms	Array	-	[ ]
loadingRooms (1)	Boolean	-	false
messages	Array	-	[ ]
messagesLoaded (2)	Boolean	-	false
menuActions (3)	Array	-	[ ]
showFiles	Boolean	-	true
showEmojis	Boolean	-	true
textMessages (4)	Object	-	null

(1) loadingRooms is must be used to show/hide a spinner icon while rooms are loading

(2) messagesLoaded must be manually set to true when all messages of a conversation have been loaded. Meaning the user cannot scroll on top anymore

(3) menuActions can be used to display your own buttons when clicking the vertical dots icon inside a room.
You can then use the menuActionHandler event to call your own action after clicking a button. Ex:

menuActions="[
  {
    name: 'inviteUser',
    title: 'Invite User'
  },
  {
    name: 'removeUser',
    title: 'Remove User'
  },
  {
    name: 'deleteRoom',
    title: 'Delete Room'
  }
]"

(4) textMessages can be used to replace default texts. Ex:

textMessages="{
  MESSAGE_DELETED: 'Ce message a été supprimé',
  MESSAGES_EMPTY: 'Aucun message',
  CONVERSATION_STARTED: 'La conversation a commencée le :',
  TYPE_MESSAGE: 'Taper votre message',
  SEARCH: 'Rechercher'
}"

Props data structure

Your props must follow a specific structure to display rooms and messages correctly:

Rooms prop

rooms="[
  {
    roomId: 1,
    roomName: 'Room 1',
    users: [
      {
        _id: 1234,
        username: 'John Doe'
      },
      {
        _id: 4321,
        username: 'John Snow'
      }
    ]
  }
]"

Messages prop

Message objects are rendered differently depending on their type. Currently, only text, emoji and file types are supported.
Each message object has a sender_id field which can have the value 'me' or the id of the corresponding agent.

messages="[
  {
    content: 'message 1",
    sender_id: 1234,
    username: 'John Doe',
    date: '13 November',
    timestamp: '10:20',
    file: {
      name: 'My File',
      size: 67351,
      type: 'png',
      url: 'https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/...'
    }
  }
]"

Events API

Event	Params	Fires when
fetchMessages (1)	{ room, options }	A user has scrolled on top to load more messages
sendMessage	{ roomId, content, file (3) }	A user has sent a message
editMessage	{ roomId, messageId, newContent, file (3) }	A user has edited a message
deleteMessage	{ roomId, messageId }	A user has deleted a message
uploadFile	{ roomId, messageId, file (3) }	A user has uploaded a file
addRoom	-	A user clicks on the plus icon next to searchbar
menuActionHandler (2)	{ roomId, action }	A user clicks on the vertical dots icon inside a room

(1) fetchMessages should be a method implementing a pagination system. Its purpose is to load older messages of a conversation when the user scroll on top

(2) menuActionHandler is the result of the menuActions prop.
When clicking a button from your menuActions array, menuActionHandler will give you the name of the button that was click. Then you can do whatever you want with it. Ex:

menuActionHandler({ roomId, action }) {
  switch (action.name) {
    case 'inviteUser':
      // call a method to invite a user to the room
    case 'removeUser':
      // call a method to remove a user from the room
    case 'deleteRoom':
      // call a method to delete the room
  }
},

(3) All file params contain: { blob, localURL, name, size, type }

Using with Firestore

Source code

You can find the source code to implement a full featured chat app using Firebase/Firestore inside the demo folder.
To test it using your own Firebase project:

• Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/antoine92190/vue-advanced-chat.git
• Inside demo/src/firestore/index.js file, replace the line const config = { ... } by your own Firebase config
• Go inside demo folder and run npm run serve

Data structure

If you decide to use the same code as in the demo folder to create your chat app, you need to have a specific Firestore data structure.
To help you get started, I added in demo/src/App.vue a method addData to initialize some data on your Firestore database.

Users collection

users: {
  USER_ID_1: {
    _id: 1,
    username: 'User 1'
  },
  USER_ID_2: {
    _id: 2,
    username: 'User 2'
  },
  USER_ID_3: {
    _id: 3,
    username: 'User 2'
  }
}

Rooms collection

chatRooms: {
  ROOM_ID_1: {
    users: [1, 3]
  },
  ROOM_ID_2: {
    users: [1, 2, 3]
  }
}

Messages collection inside a room document

messages: {
  MESSAGE_ID_1: {
    content: 'My first message',
    sender_id: 2,
    timestamp: 'December 11, 2019 at 4:00:00 PM UTC+2,
    seen: true
  }
}

License

This project is licensed under MIT License