Message Input UI

Message input is used for composing and editing messages. In this sense, it’s a primary component that users interact with in a chat, so it’s important to get it right.

Message input is a bit more complex than it might seem at first glance. Not just a text box with a “send” button, it has a lot of hidden features:

  1. Updating the typing status
  2. Uploading and previewing attachments
  3. Displaying link previews
  4. Auto-completing mentions, commands, emoji…

We will cover this features step by step. For now, let’s start with the simplest markup possible:

const CustomMessageInput = () => (
  <div className="message-input">
    <textarea value={"Hello world"} className="message-input__input" />
    <button type="button" className="message-input__button">
      ⬆️
    </button>
  </div>
);

Note that you should not render your custom message input directly, but instead pass it as a prop to either Channel or MessageInput component. That way, you can be sure that your input is wrapped with the necessary context providers, most importantly the MessageInputContext.

import {
  Chat,
  Channel,
  ChannelHeader,
  ChannelList,
  MessageList,
  Thread,
  Window,
  MessageInput,
} from "stream-chat-react";

export const App = () => (
  <Chat client={chatClient}>
    <ChannelList filters={filters} sort={sort} options={options} />
    <Channel>
      <Window>
        <ChannelHeader />
        <MessageList />
        <MessageInput Input={CustomMessageInput} />
      </Window>
      <Thread />
    </Channel>
  </Chat>
);

For now, our custom input doesn’t do anything. The MessageInputContext handles most of the input-related state and actions, so instead of handling the state yourself, just use the provided values and callbacks:

import { useMessageInputContext } from "stream-chat-react";

const CustomMessageInput = () => {
  const { text, handleChange, handleSubmit } = useMessageInputContext();

  return (
    <div className="message-input">
      <textarea
        value={text}
        className="message-input__input"
        onChange={handleChange}
        placeholder={"Type something..."}
      />
      <button
        type="button"
        className="message-input__button"
        onClick={handleSubmit}
      >
        ⬆️
      </button>
    </div>
  );
};

The great thing is that the handleChange callback not only updates the text value, but also detects links (if URL enrichment is enabled), and updates your typing status.

And with the handleSubmit callback added to the “send” button, our basic implementation is complete - try it out!

Uploading and Previewing Attachments

To support adding attachments to the message, we should start by adding a file input. And similar to the “send” button, once a file is selected, we can use a callback provided in the MessageInputContext to upload it as an attachment:

import { useMessageInputContext } from "stream-chat-react";

const AttachmentUploadButton = () => {
  const { uploadNewFiles } = useMessageInputContext();

  function handleChange(e) {
    const files = e.currentTarget.files;

    if (files && files.length > 0) {
      uploadNewFiles(files);
      e.currentTarget.value = "";
    }
  }

  return (
    <label className="message-input__button">
      <input type="file" className="visually-hidden" onChange={handleChange} />
      📎
    </label>
  );
};

There are three cases when uploads should not be allowed:

  1. Uploads are disabled for the current channel. We should check the isUploadEnabled value from the MessageInputContext to make sure.
  2. The maximum number of message attachments has been reached. For this we should check the maxFilesLeft value from the MessageInputContext.
  3. The cool-down interval is active and user should not be permitted to send messages during this period. The remaining cooldown time can be determined by cooldownRemaining value.

Let’s add these three checks:

import { useMessageInputContext } from "stream-chat-react";

const AttachmentUploadButton = () => {
  const { cooldownRemaining, uploadNewFiles, isUploadEnabled, maxFilesLeft } =
    useMessageInputContext();

  function handleChange(e) {
    const files = e.currentTarget.files;

    if (files && files.length > 0) {
      uploadNewFiles(files);
    }
  }

  if (!isUploadEnabled || maxFilesLeft === 0 || cooldownRemaining) {
    return null;
  }

  return (
    <label className="message-input__button">
      <input type="file" className="visually-hidden" onChange={handleChange} />
      📎
    </label>
  );
};

Now we need a way to preview the added attachments. The SDK provides a ready-made component for this: AttachmentPreviewList. Instead of importing it directly, you can grab it from the ComponentContext, which is used throughout the SDK to provide overridable UI components, and only fall back to the default implementation if it hasn’t been overridden:

import {
  useMessageInputContext,
  useComponentContext,
  AttachmentPreviewList as DefaultAttachmentPreviewList,
} from "stream-chat-react";

const CustomMessageInput = () => {
  const { text, handleChange, handleSubmit } = useMessageInputContext();
  const { AttachmentPreviewList = DefaultAttachmentPreviewList } =
    useComponentContext();

  return (
    <div className="message-input">
      <div className="message-input__composer">
        <AttachmentUploadButton />
        <textarea
          className="message-input__input"
          value={text}
          onChange={handleChange}
          placeholder={"Type something..."}
        />
        <button
          type="button"
          className="message-input__button"
          onClick={handleSubmit}
        >
          ⬆️
        </button>
      </div>
      <AttachmentPreviewList />
    </div>
  );
};

The nice thing about this approach is that our custom message input is not tied to a particular implementation of the attachment preview component, and the preview component can be overridden at the Channel level and is called AttachmentPreviewList.

The AttachmentPreviewList should access attachments array from MessageInputContext do display attachment previews. The default AttachmentPreviewList component iterates over the attachments array and determines the corresponding component to display the given attachment type. By default, there are 5 types of attachment preview components:

  • AudioAttachmentPreview
  • FileAttachmentPreview
  • ImageAttachmentPreview
  • VideoAttachmentPreview
  • VoiceRecordingPreview

Each of these five components can be overridden.If we have a custom component not represented by any of the above attachment types, we can override the UnsupportedAttachmentPreview as follows:

import {
  AttachmentPreviewList,
  useMessageInputContext,
} from "stream-chat-react";
import {
  CustomFileAttachmentPreview,
  CustomImageAttachmentPreview,
  // CustomAudioAttachmentPreview,
  // CustomUnsupportedAttachmentPreview,
  // CustomVideoAttachmentPreview,
  // CustomVoiceRecordingPreview,
} from "./AttachmentPreview";

const CustomAttachmentPreviewList = (props) => {
  return (
    <AttachmentPreviewList
      {...props}
      FileAttachmentPreview={CustomFileAttachmentPreview}
      ImageAttachmentPreview={CustomImageAttachmentPreview}
      // other possible preview customizations:
      // AudioAttachmentPreview={CustomAudioAttachmentPreview}
      // UnsupportedAttachmentPreview={CustomUnsupportedAttachmentPreview}
      // VideoAttachmentPreview={CustomVideoAttachmentPreview}
      // VoiceRecordingPreview={CustomVoiceRecordingPreview}
    />
  );
};

For the image attachments, the previewUri property is available. It is a temporary URL that can be used to display an image preview before the image is uploaded. Once the image is uploaded, this temporary URL is no longer available, and image_url should be used instead.

import type { ImageAttachmentPreviewProps } from "stream-chat-react";

export const CustomImageAttachmentPreview = ({
  attachment,
  handleRetry,
  removeAttachments,
}: ImageAttachmentPreviewProps) => {
  const url = attachment.previewUri ?? attachment.image_url;
  if (!url) return null;

  return (
    <div
      className="message-input__attachment-preview message-input__attachment-preview_image"
      style={{ backgroundImage: `url(${url})` }}
      aria-label={attachment.fallback}
    >
      <AttachmentActions
        attachment={attachment}
        handleRetry={handleRetry}
        removeAttachments={removeAttachments}
      />
    </div>
  );
};

For non-image file attachments, the file name (attachment.title) and file size (attachment.file_size) can be used to display a preview:

import type { FileAttachmentPreviewProps } from "stream-chat-react";

export const CustomFileAttachmentPreview = ({
  attachment,
  handleRetry,
  removeAttachments,
}: FileAttachmentPreviewProps) => {
  return (
    <div className="message-input__attachment-preview message-input__attachment-preview_file">
      📄 {attachment.title} <br />({attachment.file_size} bytes)
      <AttachmentActions
        attachment={attachment}
        handleRetry={handleRetry}
        removeAttachments={removeAttachments}
      />
    </div>
  );
};

Note that an attachment can be in three different states:

  1. 'uploading' means the attachment is still uploading; you may want to display a spinner in this case.
  2. 'failed' means that something went wrong while uploading the attachment; you may want to show an option to retry the upload.
  3. 'finished' means the attachment had been successfully uploaded.

The upload state can be retrieved the localMetadata value as attachment.localMetadata.uploadState.

import { isLocalImageAttachment } from "stream-chat-react";
import type { AttachmentPreviewProps } from "stream-chat-react";

export const AttachmentActions = ({
  attachment,
  handleRetry,
  removeAttachments,
}: AttachmentPreviewProps) => {
  let children = null;
  const { uploadState } = attachment.localMetadata;

  if (uploadState === "uploading") {
    children = (
      <div className="message-input__attachment-action">Loading...</div>
    );
  }

  if (uploadState === "finished") {
    children = (
      <>
        <a
          className="message-input__attachment-action"
          href={
            isLocalImageAttachment(attachment)
              ? attachment.image_url
              : attachment.asset_url
          }
          target="_blank"
          rel="noreferrer"
        >
          📥
        </a>
        <button
          className="message-input__attachment-action"
          onClick={() => removeAttachments([attachment.localMetadata.id])}
        >
          ❌
        </button>
      </>
    );
  }

  if (uploadState === "failed") {
    <button
      className="message-input__attachment-action"
      onClick={() => handleRetry(attachment)}
    >
      Failed. Retry?
    </button>;
  }

  return <div className="message-input__attachment-actions">{children}</div>;
};

To achieve the below look we should add the missing CSS.

.message-input__attachment-preview {
  position: relative;
  border-radius: 8px;
  width: 160px;
  height: 160px;
  padding: 8px;
  border: 1px solid #00000014;
}

.message-input__attachment-preview_image {
  background-size: cover;
  background-position: center;
  background-clip: border-box;
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

.message-input__attachment-actions {
  display: flex;
  gap: 4px;
  position: absolute;
  left: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  padding: 8px;
}

.message-input__attachment-action {
  font: inherit;
  border-radius: 4px;
  padding: 4px;
  background: #fff;
  border: 1px solid #00000014;
}

If URL enrichment is enabled both in channel settings (enabled by default) and in the urlEnrichmentConfig of the MessageInput component (disabled by default), the SDK will automatically detect links in the message text (as long as it’s set properly in the MessageInputContext) and create previews for them.

To display link previews, you can use a pre-built LinkPreviewList component available in the ComponentContext. Using the ComponentContext allows you to hook into the component override mechanism used throughout the SDK.

So the rough idea is:

  1. Grab the LinkPreviewList from the ComponentContext (fall back to the default implementation if the component wasn’t overridden).
  2. Grab the linkPreviews from the MessageInputContext and pass them to the LinkPreviewList.

The only thing to note here is that linkPreviews is a Map with URLs as keys and enriched data as values. Before passing it to the LinkPreviewList, we should convert it to an array:

import {
  useMessageInputContext,
  useComponentContext,
  AttachmentPreviewList as DefaultAttachmentPreviewList,
  LinkPreviewList as DefaultLinkPreviewList,
} from "stream-chat-react";

const CustomMessageInput = () => {
  const { text, linkPreviews, handleChange, handleSubmit } =
    useMessageInputContext();
  const {
    LinkPreviewList = DefaultLinkPreviewList,
    AttachmentPreviewList = DefaultAttachmentPreviewList,
  } = useComponentContext();

  return (
    <div className="message-input">
      <LinkPreviewList linkPreviews={Array.from(linkPreviews.values())} />
      <div className="message-input__composer">
        <AttachmentUploadButton />
        <textarea
          className="message-input__input"
          value={text}
          onChange={handleChange}
        />
        <button
          type="button"
          className="message-input__button"
          onClick={handleSubmit}
        >
          ⬆️
        </button>
      </div>
      <AttachmentPreviewList />
    </div>
  );
};

As always, if you need deeper customization, you can implement the link preview component from scratch. Since all the necessary data can be found in the linkPreviews value of the MessageInputContext, the implementation itself is quite simple.

The link preview itself goes through several lifecycle states:

  1. 'queued' means that the URL enrichment process hasn’t started yet. This process is debounced, so to avoid flashing UI we should ignore queued previews.
  2. 'loading' means that URL enrichment is in progress. Depending on the desired UX, you can either ignore loading previews, or show a spinner or other loading state.
  3. 'loaded' means that the preview is ready.
  4. 'dismissed' means the preview has been dismissed by the user.

So the only bit of interactivity we need to add is an option to dismiss a link preview:

import { useMessageInputContext } from "stream-chat-react";

const CustomLinkPreviewList = () => {
  const { linkPreviews: linkPreviewMap, dismissLinkPreview } =
    useMessageInputContext();
  const linkPreviews = Array.from(linkPreviewMap.values());

  if (linkPreviews.length === 0) {
    return null;
  }

  return (
    <ul className="message-input__link-previews">
      {linkPreviews.map(
        (preview) =>
          preview.state === "loaded" && (
            <li
              key={preview.og_scrape_url}
              className="message-input__link-preview"
            >
              <span className="message-input__link-preview-icon">🔗</span>
              <div className="message-input__link-preview-og">
                <strong>{preview.title}</strong>
                <br />
                {preview.text}
              </div>
              <button
                type="button"
                className="message-input__button"
                onClick={() => dismissLinkPreview(preview)}
              >
                ❌
              </button>
            </li>
          ),
      )}
    </ul>
  );
};

Handling Slow Mode

If the Slow Mode is configured for the current channel, we should prevent messages from being sent before the cooldown period has passed.

The first thing we should do is disable or hide the “send” button while the cooldown period is in effect. We can use the cooldownRemaining value from the MessageInputContext: it’s guaranteed to have a non-zero numeric value while the user is within a cooldown period, and to reset to a falsy value when the cooldown period ends. Note that to avoid excessive rendering, the value itself does not “tick down” every second.

To provide visual feedback with a countdown, we can use the CooldownTimer component from the ComponentContext:

import {
  useMessageInputContext,
  useComponentContext,
  AttachmentPreviewList as DefaultAttachmentPreviewList,
  CooldownTimer as DefaultCooldownTimer,
} from "stream-chat-react";

const CustomMessageInput = () => {
  const {
    text,
    cooldownRemaining,
    setCooldownRemaining,
    cooldownInterval,
    handleChange,
    handleSubmit,
  } = useMessageInputContext();
  const {
    CooldownTimer = DefaultCooldownTimer,
    AttachmentPreviewList = DefaultAttachmentPreviewList,
  } = useComponentContext();

  return (
    <div className="message-input">
      <div className="message-input__composer">
        <AttachmentUploadButton />
        <textarea
          className="message-input__input"
          value={text}
          onChange={handleChange}
        />
        <button
          type="button"
          className="message-input__button"
          disabled={!!cooldownRemaining}
          onClick={handleSubmit}
        >
          {cooldownRemaining ? (
            <>
              ⏳{" "}
              <CooldownTimer
                cooldownInterval={cooldownInterval}
                setCooldownRemaining={setCooldownRemaining}
              />
            </>
          ) : (
            <>⬆️</>
          )}
        </button>
      </div>
      <AttachmentPreviewList />
    </div>
  );
};

The component itself is very simple, it’s just a single <div> with a timer that counts down seconds. Most customizations can be done with CSS, but if you need to implement the whole component from scratch, the only trick is to add a timer that counts down from the cooldownInterval:

const CustomCooldownTimer = () => {
  const { cooldownRemaining, cooldownInterval } = useMessageInputContext();
  const enabled = !!cooldownRemaining;
  const [secondsPassed, setSecondsPassed] = useState(0);

  useEffect(() => {
    const startedAt = Date.now();
    const interval = setInterval(() => {
      setSecondsPassed(Math.floor((Date.now() - startedAt) / 1000));
    }, 500);
    return () => clearInterval(interval);
  }, [enabled]);

  return <strong>⏳ {cooldownInterval - secondsPassed}</strong>;
};

Previous
System Message
Next
Link Previews in Message Input
© Getstream.io, Inc. All Rights Reserved.