Chat in an open channel

In an open channel, you can have a public chat using the OpenChannelView class with a massive number of users to interact with in a more dynamic environment. Open channels can accommodate up to 1,000 simultaneous users and don't require an invitation to enter.

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Sendbird Chat SwiftUI supports plain text messages, file messages, and media content such as photos and videos to be sent in open channels. Once delivered, those messages are grouped by time in minutes and date in the channel.

To learn more about the channels, see Channel types in Chat SDK.

Refer to the table below to see what features there are in OpenChannelView.

You can start building a channel-based chat service by calling the OpenChannelView class. It's also in charge of auto connecting to Sendbird server and internal functions to handle core features of SwiftUI such as pagination and real-time updates.

Note: You can initialize OpenChannelView by setting the value of channelURL. If you've already created MessageListParams, we recommend you to set all of the objects together. Otherwise, the default values are used for this structure.

You can start building a chat in open channel view through the OpenChannelView structure. Use the init(channelURL:) initializer to create the instance and display the view.

import SwiftUI
import SendbirdSwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        OpenChannelView(channelURL: {CHANNEL_URL})
    }
}

Sendbird Chat SwiftUI provides a View customization and DestinationViewBuilder.

• View customization: Our SwiftUI SDK allows you to selectively customize view elements. To learn more about the customization and our SwiftUI is designed, see the customization guide.
• DestinationViewBuilder: Use DestinationViewBuilder to customize the destination views that are navigatable from the group channel view.

Note : Visit our Github Sample to see the custom sample implementation for each item.

You can easily customize a specific part of a View, which particularly comes in handy when changing only a certain area in the View. To do so, use the View Builders that Sendbird has predefined and its a ViewConfig. The ViewConfig contains the data needed to render the view and its parameters can be found in the table below.

The following code demonstrates how to replace the view items using headerItem. All other {Component}Items can be used in the same way.

Note : When you customize a parent view, customizations in the child views will not be applied. For example, if you customize the titleView in the headerItem, the customizations of the coverImage or titleLabel in the lower view items will not be applied.

OpenChannelView(
    channelURL: {CHANNEL_URL},
    headerItem: {
        .init()
        .leftView { viewConfig in
            Text("Custom Left")
        }
        .rightView { viewConfig in // chaining
            Text("Custom Right")
        }
    }
)

You can also customize the entire view area as desired. You simply need to return a SwiftUI View in the closure. The ViewConfig contains the data needed to render the view. Its parameters can be found in the table below.

The following code demonstrates how to replace the entire list area using the list parameter.

Note : When you customize a parent view, customizations in the child views will not be applied. For example, if you customize the entire area through the list, the customizations set in the listItem will not be applied.

OpenChannelView(
    list: { viewConfig in
        List(viewConfig.messages) { message in
            Text(message.message)
        }
    }
)

Note: The messages in viewConfig are sorted in descending timestamp. This means that the latest message appears first in the array.

Sendbird Chat SwiftUI is designed to internally navigate from each view to its connected view. However, if you need to customize the destination view, you can do so by using the interface provided by the DestinationViewBuilder.

The following code demonstrates how to replace the channel settings view connected from the channel view.

OpenChannelView(channelURL: {CHANNEL_URL})
    .channelSettingsView { channelURL in
        OpenUserListView(channelURL: channelURL)
    }

Note : If you've customized a child view of another view, you need to set the destination view for all the views from the top to the destination view.

In the channel, message list are organized based on their sending status and their arrival time.

In this layout, older messages are positioned at the top of the list, while the most recent messages appear at the bottom. As new messages are successfully sent and received, they are displayed at the lower end of the list, just above any messages that are pending or have failed. Below these, you'll find any messages that are still pending or have failed to send. These are ordered based on their original sending time. Furthermore, if the bubble typing indicator feature is enabled for your channel, this indicator will be consistently shown at the very bottom of the message list, regardless of the statuses of other messages. This layout prioritizes the visibility of new, successful messages while maintaining awareness of pending and failed messages, as well as ongoing typing activity.

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