Setup

Follow the instructions below to ensure that QuickBlox JavaScript SDK runs smoothly with your app.

Visit our Key Concepts page to get an overall understanding of the most important QuickBlox concepts.

Browsers support

Get application credentials

QuickBlox application includes everything that brings messaging right into your application - chat, video calling, users, push notifications, etc. To create a QuickBlox application, follow the steps below:

1. Register a new account following this link. Type in your email and password to sign in. You can also sign in with your Google or Github accounts.
2. Create the app by clicking the New app button.
3. Configure the app. Type in the information about your organization into corresponding fields and click the Add button.
4. Go to Dashboard => YOUR_APP => Overview section and copy your Application ID, Authorization Key, Authorization Secret, and Account Key.

Requirements

The minimum requirements for QuickBlox JavaScript SDK are:

• JavaScript es5

Install QuickBlox SDK into your app

There are 3 ways to integrate QuickBlox JavaScript SDK into your app.

Dependencies for browser

Install QuickBlox library dependencies for browser to establish communication with QuickBlox server. Simply connect the JS file as a normal script. Once it is done, a window scoped variable called QB is created.

<script src="https://unpkg.com/quickblox/quickblox.min.js"></script>

Node.js and NPM integration

📘

To manage project dependencies Node.js and npm must be installed.

1. Open a terminal and enter the commands below in your project path.

npm install quickblox --save

2. To be able to work with QuickBlox library, connect it as follows:

var QuickBlox = require('quickblox');

// OR to create many QB instances
var QuickBlox = require('quickblox').QuickBlox;
var QB1 = new QuickBlox();
var QB2 = new QuickBlox();

Yarn

Install the SDK through Yarn by running the following command:

yarn add quickblox

Initialize QuickBlox SDK

Initialize the framework with your application credentials. Pass Application ID, Authorization Key, Authorization Secret, and Account Key to the init() method.

var APPLICATION_ID = 41;
var AUTH_KEY = "lkjdueksu7392kj";
var AUTH_SECRET = "iiohfdija792hj";
var ACCOUNT_KEY = "sdjfnksnlk2bk1k34kb";
var CONFIG = { debug: true };

QB.init(APPLICATION_ID, AUTH_KEY, AUTH_SECRET, ACCOUNT_KEY, CONFIG);

❗️

Security

It's not recommended to keep your authKey and authSecret inside an application in production mode, instead of this, the best approach will be to store them on your backend.

You can set the following fields using the CONFIG object:

Initialize QuickBlox SDK without Authorization Key and Secret

You may don't want to store authKey and authSecret inside an application for security reasons. In such case, you can initialize QuickBlox SDK with applicationId and accountKey only, and store your authKey and authSecret on your backend. But, if so, the implementation of authentication with QuickBlox should be also moved to your backend.

var appId = 3451;
var accountKey = 'sdjfnksnlk2bk1k34kb';
var config = { debug: false };

QB.initWithAppId(appId, accountKey, config);

Then using your backend you can authorize a user in the QuickBlox system, send back the user session token, and set it to the QuickBlox SDK using startSessionWithToken(sessionToken, callBack) method. You can find out more about this in the Set existing session section.

Initialize with existing token

🚧

If you have version lower than 2.14.1, you have to use only the code below. The section Initialize QuickBlox SDK without Authorization Key and Secret describe how to implement this for version greater than 2.14.1

You can initialize the SDK with an existing QuickBlox token. It can be interesting in cases when you build a big system and you have the server side which generates QuickBlox tokens.

var sessionToken = '1b785b603a9ae88d9dfbd1fc0cca0335086927f1';
var appId = 3451;
var accountKey = 'sdjfnksnlk2bk1k34kb';
var config = { debug: false };

QB.init(sessionToken, appId, null, accountKey, config);

Point SDK to enterprise server

To point QuickBlox SDK to the QuickBlox enterprise server, you should set API and chat endpoints in the CONFIG object and pass it to the init() method.

var APPLICATION_ID = 41;
var AUTH_KEY = "lkjdueksu7392kj";
var AUTH_SECRET = "iiohfdija792hj";
var ACCOUNT_KEY = "sdjfnksnlk2bk1k34kb";
var CONFIG = {
  endpoints: {
    api: "apicustomdomain.quickblox.com", // set custom API endpoint
    chat: "chatcustomdomain.quickblox.com", // set custom Chat endpoint
  },
  chatProtocol: {
    active: 2, // set 1 to use BOSH, set 2 to use WebSockets (default)
  },
  /**
   * set { mode: 1 } or true to output to console,
   * set { mode: 2, file: 'log.txt' } to output to file,
   * set "false" to not output
   */
  debug: { mode: 1 },
};
QB.init(APPLICATION_ID, AUTH_KEY, AUTH_SECRET, ACCOUNT_KEY, CONFIG);

Set the endpoints field of the CONFIG object:

📘

Contact our sales team to get API endpoint and chat endpoint.

Enable logging

Logging functionality allows you to keep track of all events and activities while running your app. As a result, you can monitor the operation of the SDK and improve the debug efficiency.

Set the debug mode in the CONFIG object and then call the init() method.

var APPLICATION_ID = 41;
var AUTH_KEY = "lkjdueksu7392kj";
var AUTH_SECRET = "iiohfdija792hj";
var ACCOUNT_KEY = "sdjfnksnlk2bk1k34kb";
var CONFIG = {
  // other settings
  /**
   * set { mode: 1 } or true to output to console,
   * set { mode: 2, file: 'log.txt' } to output to file,
   * set "false" to not output
   */
  debug: { mode: 1 }
};
QB.init(APPLICATION_ID, AUTH_KEY, AUTH_SECRET, ACCOUNT_KEY, CONFIG);

There are 3 debug modes:

Message carbons

Message carbons functionality allows for multi-device support. Thus, all user messages get copied to all their devices so they could keep up with the current state of the conversation. For example, a User A has phone running conversations and desktop running conversations. User B has desktop running conversations. When User B sends a message to User A, the message shows on both the desktop and phone of User A.

📘

Message carbons are always enabled.

Stream management

Stream management has two important features Stanza Acknowledgements and Stream Resumption:

• Stanza Acknowledgements is the ability to know if a stanza or series of stanzas has been received by one's peer. In other words, a reply is requested on every sent message. If the reply is received, the message is considered as delivered.
• Stream Resumption is the ability to quickly resume a stream that has been terminated. So once a connection is re-established, Stream Resumption is executed. By matching the sequence numbers assigned to each Stanza Acknowledgement a server and client can verify which messages are missing and request to resend missing messages.

var CONFIG = {
  streamManagement: {
    enable: true
  }
};

📘

By default, stream management functionality is disabled. Make sure to enable it using the CONFIG parameter when calling init() method. Review Initialize QuickBlox SDK section for more details.

Custom ICE servers

You can customize a list of ICE servers. By default, WebRTC module will use internal ICE servers that are usually enough, but you can always set your own. WebRTC engine will choose the TURN relay with the lowest round-trip time. Thus, setting multiple TURN servers allows your application to scale-up in terms of bandwidth and number of users.

var CONFIG = {
  webrtc: {
    iceServers: [
      {
        urls: "stun:stun.randomserver.example",
        username: "stun_login",
        credential: "stun_password"
      },
      {
        urls: "turn:turn.randomserver.example",
        username: "turn_login",
        credential: "turn_password"
      }
    ]
  }
};