Retrieve a list of messages

Ways to load messages are different for open channels and group channels. For open channels, use MessageListParams or PreviousMessageListQuery to retrieve messages from a certain reference point. Meanwhile, loadPrevious() and loadNext() in Message collection retrieve messages sent and received in a group channel.

Using the getMessagesByTimestamp() method or the getMessagesByMessageId() method, you can retrieve messages before or after a reference point, which can be a specific timestamp in Unix milliseconds or a message ID in an open channel.

Those methods have two parameters, which are a reference point of message retrieval and a params parameter for MessageListParams. Under the MessageListParams object, you can specify values to properties such as previousResultSize, messageTypeFilter, and customType. The following code shows several types of parameters that you can configure to customize a message query.

try {
  const params = {
    prevResultSize: 5,
    nextResultSize: 5,
    // ...
  };
  const messages = await channel.getMessagesByTimestamp(ts, params);
} catch(e) {
  // Handle error
}
try {
  const params = {
    prevResultSize: 5,
    nextResultSize: 5,
    // ...
  };
  const messages = await channel.getMessagesByMessageId(messageId, params);
} catch(e) {
  // Handle error
}

This table only contains properties shown in the code above. To see the comprehensive list of all available methods and properties, see MessageListParams in API reference.

If you wish to get messages using pagination instead of a time-based or ID-based reference point, use PreviousMessageListQuery and its load() method, which returns a list of BaseMessage objects. With a returned list, you can display the past messages in your UI once they are loaded. The following code is an example of retrieving previous messages in a channel.

const params = {
  limit: 20,
  reverse: false,
  messageTypeFilter: ALL,
  includeReactions: true,
  // ...
};
const query = channel.createPreviousMessageListQuery(params);
try {
  const messages = await query.load();
} catch(e) {
  // Handle error
}

To see the comprehensive list of all available methods and properties, see PreviousMessageListQueryParams in API reference.

A chat view of a group channel can be drawn with a MessageCollection instance. To retrieve messages within the collection, check if there are more messages to load through hasPrevious or hasNext and then call loadPrevious or loadNext, respectively. Then the previous or next page of messages is retrieved.

// Get the next page of messages.
if (collection.hasNext) {
  const messages = await collection.loadNext();
}
// Get the previous page of messages.
if (collection.hasPrevious) {
  const messages = await collection.loadPrevious();
}