Send a message
For both open and group channels, users can send messages of the following types to the channel they are in.
Message type | Class | Description |
---|---|---|
Text | A text message sent by a user | |
File | A binary file message sent by a user |
Additionally, you can also subclassify a message by specifying its custom type. This custom type takes on the form of string
and can be used to search or filter messages. It allows you to append information to your message and customize message categorization.
User message
The following code shows several types of parameters that you can configure to customize text messages using SbUserMessageCreateParams
. Under the SbUserMessageCreateParams
object, you can assign specific values to Message
, Data
, and other properties. By assigning arbitrary string to the data
property, you can set custom font size, font type, or JSON
object. To send your messages, you need to pass the SbUserMessageCreateParams
object as an argument to the parameter in the SendUserMessage()
method.
Through the callback handler of the SendUserMessage()
method, the Sendbird server always notifies whether your message has been successfully sent to the channel. When there is a delivery failure due to network issues, an exception is returned through the callback method.
File message
A user can also send a binary file through the Chat SDK as the file itself or through sending a URL.
Sending a raw file means you're uploading it to the Sendbird server where it can be downloaded on client apps. When you upload a file directly to the server, there is a size limit imposed on the file depending on your plan. You can see the limit on your dashboard and contact our sales team to change the limit.
The other option is to send a file hosted on your server. You can pass the file's URL, which represents its location, as an argument to a parameter. In this case, your file isn't hosted on the Sendbird server and it can only be downloaded from your own server. When you send a file message with a URL, there is no limit on the file size since it isn't directly uploaded to the Sendbird server.
Note: You can use
SendFileMessage()
, which is another method that allows you to send up to 20 file messages per one method call.
The following code shows several types of parameters that you can configure to customize file messages by using a SbFileMessageCreateParams
. Under the SbFileMessageCreateParams
object, you can assign specific values to CustomType
and other properties. To send your messages, you need to pass the SbFileMessageCreateParams
object as an argument to the parameter in the SendFileMessage()
method.
Through the callback handler of the SendFileMessage()
method, the Sendbird server always notifies whether your message has been successfully sent to the channel. When there is a delivery failure due to network issues, an exception is returned through the callback method.