Key Concepts

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Dashboard

• The CometChat Dashboard enables you to create new apps (projects) and manage your existing apps.
• Ideally, you should create two apps - one for development and one for production.
• Do not create separate apps for every platform; if you do, your users on different platforms will not be able to communicate with each other!
• For every app, a unique App ID (appId) is generated. This appId will be required when integrating CometChat within your app.

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Users

• In CometChat, a “user” refers to anyone who utilizes the service for communication.
• Each user is uniquely identified using uid.
• The uid is typically the primary ID of the user from your database.
• A uid can be alphanumeric with underscore (_) and hyphen (-). Spaces, punctuation and other special characters are not allowed.

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User Roles

• A role is a category for a group of similar users.
• For example, you may want to group your premium users using the role “Premium”.
• You then use this to filter users or enable/disable features by writing conditional code.

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User List

• The User List can be used to build the Contacts or Who’s Online view in your app.
• The list of users can be different based on the logged-in user.

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Authentication

• For a user to engage with other users using CometChat, they must be authenticated and logged into CometChat’s system, typically after they have logged into your application or website.
• CometChat does not take care of user management tasks such as registration and login processes. These aspects must be managed within your own application or website. Once a user is logged into your service, you can then programmatically log them into CometChat, ensuring that users never have to log into CometChat directly.
• Similarly, CometChat does not manage friendships or contacts within its platform. If your application requires a feature where users can add each other as friends, this must be handled on your end. After two users have established a mutual friend connection in your application, you can then reflect this relationship within CometChat, linking them as friends in the messaging system.

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Auth workflow

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Auth & Rest API Keys

• From the CometChat dashboard, you can generate two types of keys.
• Each key serves a distinct purpose and provides different levels of access to the CometChat platform, ensuring that your application’s interaction with CometChat is secure and appropriate permissions are maintained.

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Auth token

• Auth tokens are associated with users in CometChat. A single user can have multiple auth tokens. The auth tokens should be per user per device.
• It should be generated by API call ideally, via server to server call. The auth token should then be given to CometChat for login.
• An Auth Token can only be deleted via dashboard or using REST API.

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Groups

• A group in CometChat is a feature that allows multiple users to engage in conversations about specific topics or shared interests. It facilitates collective communication and collaboration among its members.
• Each group is uniquely identified using guid.
• The guid is typically the primary ID of the group from your database.
• If you do not store group information in your database, you can generate a random string for use as guid.
• A guid can be alphanumeric with underscore (_) and hyphen (-). Spaces, punctuation and other special characters are not allowed.

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Group types

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Group members

• After joining a group on CometChat, a participant is considered a member of that group.
• This membership is ongoing, meaning they will continue to receive messages, calls, and notifications from the group indefinitely.
• If a member no longer wishes to receive these communications, they must actively leave the group or be removed by being kicked out or banned by a group administrator.

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Messaging

1. Message
2. Custom
3. Action
4. Call
5. Interactive

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Message

1. text - A plain text message
2. image- An image message
3. video- A video message
4. audio- An audio message
5. file- A file message

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Custom

• In the case of messages that belong to the custom category, there are no predefined types.
• Custom messages can be used by developers to send messages that do not fit in the default category and types provided by CometChat.
• For messages with the category custom, the developers can set their own type to uniquely identify the custom message.
• A very good example of a custom message would be the sharing of location co-ordinates. In this case, the developer can decide to use the custom message with type set to location.

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Action

1. groupMember - action performed on a group member.
2. message - action performed on a message.

1. joined - when a group member joins a group
2. left - when a group member leaves a group
3. kicked - when a group member is kicked from the group
4. banned - when a group member is banned from the group
5. unbanned - when a group member is unbanned from the group
6. added - when a user is added to the group
7. scopeChanged - When the scope of a group member is changed.

1. edited - when a message is edited.
2. deleted - when a message is deleted.

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Call

1. audio
2. video

1. initiated - when a is initiated to a user/group
2. ongoing - when the receiver of the call has accepted the call
3. canceled - when the call has been canceled by the initiator of the call
4. rejected - when the call has been rejected by the receiver of the call
5. unanswered - when the call was not answered by the receiver.
6. busy - when the receiver of the call was busy on another call.
7. ended - when the call was successfully completed and ended by either the initiator or receiver.

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Interactive

1. form
2. card
3. scheduler
4. customInteractive