Chat	Media	Audio Messages	Extra

Chat

A SwiftUI Chat UI framework with fully customizable message cells and a built-in media picker

Features

• Displays your messages with pagination and allows you to create and "send" new messages (sending means calling a closure since user will be the one providing actual API calls)
• Allows you to pass a custom view builder for messages and input views
• Has a built-in photo and video library/camera picker for multiple media asset selection
• Can display a fullscreen menu on long press a message cell (automatically shows scroll for big messages)
• Supports "reply to message" via message menu or through a closure. Remove and edit are coming soon
• This library allows to send the following content in messages in any combination:
  • Text with/without markdown
  • Photo/video
  • Audio recording Coming soon:
  • User's location
  • Documents
  • Link with preview

Usage

Create a chat view like this:

@State var messages: [Message] = []

var body: some View {
    ChatView(messages: messages) { draft in
        yourViewModel.send(draft: draft)
    }
}

where:
messages - list of messages to display
didSendMessage - a closure which is called when the user presses the send button

Message is a type that Chat uses for the internal implementation. In the code above it expects the user to provide a list of Message structs, and it returns a DraftMessage in the didSendMessage closure. You can map it both ways to your own Message model that your API expects or use as is.

Available chat types

Chat type - determines the order of messages and direction of new message animation. Available options:

• conversation - the latest message is at the bottom, new messages appear from the bottom
• comments - the latest message is at the top, new messages appear from the top

Reply mode - determines how replying to message looks. Available options:

• quote - when replying to message A, new message will appear as the newest message, quoting message A in its body
• answer - when replying to message A, new message with appear direclty below message A as a separate cell without duplicating message A in its body

To specify any of these pass them through init:

ChatView(messages: viewModel.messages, chatType: .comments, replyMode: .answer) { draft in
    yourViewModel.send(draft: draft)
}

Custom UI

You may customize message cells like this:

ChatView(messages: viewModel.messages) { draft in
    viewModel.send(draft: draft)
} messageBuilder: { message, positionInUserGroup, positionInCommentsGroup, showContextMenuClosure, messageActionClosure, showAttachmentClosure in
    VStack {
        Text(message.text)
        if !message.attachments.isEmpty {
            ForEach(message.attachments, id: \.id) { at in
                AsyncImage(url: at.thumbnail)
            }
        }
    }
}

messageBuilder's parameters:

• message - the message containing user info, attachments, etc.
• positionInUserGroup - the position of the message in its continuous collection of messages from the same user
• positionInCommentsGroup - position of message in its continuous group of comments (only works for .answer ReplyMode, nil for .quote mode)
• showContextMenuClosure - closure to show message context menu
• messageActionClosure - closure to pass user interaction, .reply for example
• showAttachmentClosure - you can pass an attachment to this closure to use ChatView's fullscreen media viewer

You may customize the input view (a text field with buttons at the bottom) like this:

ChatView(messages: viewModel.messages) { draft in
    viewModel.send(draft: draft)
} inputViewBuilder: { textBinding, attachments, inputViewState, inputViewStyle, inputViewActionClosure, dismissKeyboardClosure in
    Group {
        switch inputViewStyle {
        case .message: // input view on chat screen
            VStack {
                HStack {
                    Button("Send") { inputViewActionClosure(.send) }
                    Button("Attach") { inputViewActionClosure(.photo) }
                }
                TextField("Write your message", text: textBinding)
            }
        case .signature: // input view on photo selection screen
            VStack {
                HStack {
                    Button("Send") { inputViewActionClosure(.send) }
                }
                TextField("Compose a signature for photo", text: textBinding)
                    .background(Color.green)
            }
        }
    }
}

inputViewBuilder's parameters:

• textBinding to bind your own TextField
• attachments is a struct containing photos, videos, recordings and a message you are replying to
• inputViewState - the state of the input view that is controlled by the library automatically if possible or through your calls of inputViewActionClosure
• inputViewStyle - .message or .signature (the chat screen or the photo selection screen)
• inputViewActionClosure for calling on taps on your custom buttons. For example, call inputViewActionClosure(.send) if you want to send your message with your own button, then the library will reset the text and attachments and call the didSendMessage sending closure
• dismissKeyboardClosure - call this to dismiss keyboard

Custom message menu

Long tap on a message will display a menu for this message (can be turned off, see Modifiers). To define custom message menu actions declare an enum conforming to MessageMenuAction. Then the library will show your custom menu options on long tap on message instead of default ones, if you pass your enum's name to it (see code sample). Once the action is selected special callbcak will be called. Here is a simple example:

enum Action: MessageMenuAction {
    case reply, edit

    func title() -> String {
        switch self {
        case .reply:
            "Reply"
        case .edit:
            "Edit"
        }
    }
    
    func icon() -> Image {
        switch self {
        case .reply:
            Image(systemName: "arrowshape.turn.up.left")
        case .edit:
            Image(systemName: "square.and.pencil")
        }
    }
}

ChatView(messages: viewModel.messages) { draft in
    viewModel.send(draft: draft)
} messageMenuAction: { (action: Action, defaultActionClosure, message) in // <-- here: specify the name of your `MessageMenuAction` enum
    switch action {
    case .reply:
        defaultActionClosure(message, .reply)
    case .edit:
        defaultActionClosure(message, .edit { editedText in
            // update this message's text on your BE
            print(editedText)
        })
    }
}

messageMenuAction's parameters:

• selectedMenuAction - action selected by the user from the menu. NOTE: when declaring this variable, specify its type (your custom descendant of MessageMenuAction) explicitly
• defaultActionClosure - a closure taking a case of default implementation of MessageMenuAction which provides simple actions handlers; you call this closure passing the selected message and choosing one of the default actions (.reply, .edit) if you need them; or you can write a custom implementation for all your actions, in that case just ignore this closure
• message - message for which the menu is displayed

When implementing your own MessageMenuActionClosure, write a switch statement passing through all the cases of your MessageMenuAction, inside each case write your own action handler, or call the default one. NOTE: not all default actions work out of the box - e.g. for .edit you'll still need to provide a closure to save the edited text on your BE. Please see CommentsExampleView in ChatExample project for MessageMenuActionClosure usage example.

Small view builders:

These use AnyView, so please try to keep them easy enough

• betweenListAndInputViewBuilder - content to display in between the chat list view and the input view
• mainHeaderBuilder - a header for the whole chat, which will scroll together with all the messages and headers
• headerBuilder - date section header builder

Modifiers

isListAboveInputView - messages table above the input field view or not
showDateHeaders - show section headers with dates between days, default is true
isScrollEnabled - forbid scrolling for messages' UITabelView
showMessageMenuOnLongPress - turn menu on long tap on/off
showNetworkConnectionProblem - display network error on/off
assetsPickerLimit - set a limit for MediaPicker built into the library
setMediaPickerSelectionParameters - a struct holding MediaPicker selection parameters (assetsPickerLimit and others like mediaType, selectionStyle, etc.).
orientationHandler - handle screen rotation

enableLoadMore(offset: Int, handler: @escaping ChatPaginationClosure) - when user scrolls to offset-th message from the end, call the handler function, so the user can load more messages. NOTE: New messages won't appear in the chat unless it's scrolled up to the very top - it's an optimization.
chatNavigation(title: String, status: String? = nil, cover: URL? = nil) - pass the info for the Chat's navigation bar

makes sense only for built-in message view

avatarSize - the default avatar is a circle, you can specify its diameter here tapAvatarClosure - closure to call on avatar tap
messageUseMarkdown - use markdown (e.g. ** to make something bold) or not showMessageTimeView - show timestamp in a corner of the message
setMessageFont - pass custom font to use for messages

makes sense only for built-in input view

setAvailableInput - hide some buttons in default InputView. Available options are: - .full - media + text + audio
- .textAndMedia
- .textAndAudio
- .textOnly

Examples

There are 2 example projects:

• One has a simple bot posting random text/media messages every 2 seconds. It has no back end and no local storage. Every new start is clean and fresh.
• Another has an integration with Firestore data base. It has all the necessary back end support, including storing media and audio messages, unread messages counters, etc. You'll have to create your own Firestore app and DB. Also replace GoogleService-Info with your own. After that you can test on multiple sims/devices.

Create your firestore app https://console.firebase.google.com/ Create firesote database (for light weight text data) https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/manage-data/add-data Create cloud firestore database (for images and voice recordings) https://firebase.google.com/docs/storage/web/start

Example

To try out the Chat examples:

• Clone the repo git clone [email protected]:exyte/Chat.git
• Open terminal and run cd <ChatRepo>/Example
• Wait for SPM to finish downloading packages
• Run it!

Installation

Swift Package Manager

dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/exyte/Chat.git")
]

CocoaPods

pod 'ExyteChat'

Carthage

github "Exyte/Chat"

Requirements

• iOS 16+
• Xcode 14+

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