Quick Start

Learn how to install QuickBlox SDK and send your first message.

QuickBlox SDK helps you implement real-time chat, video chat, and push notifications to your app. You can fully concentrate on your mobile app development.

Start with sample apps

Choose the code sample below to jump-start the development. We use GitHub repositories to make it easy to explore, copy, and modify our code samples. The guide on how to launch and configure the sample app is on GitHub.

React Native Chat Sample App

React Native Video Calling Sample App

For more samples, head to our Code Samples page. These sample apps are available on GitHub so feel free to browse them there.

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 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 React Native SDK are:

  • iOS 12.0
  • Android (minimum version 5.0, API 21)
  • React Native (minimum version 0.60)

Install QuickBlox SDK into your app

📘

To manage project dependencies:

- Node.js and npm must be installed
- CocoaPods must be installed for iOS.

To connect QuickBlox to your app just add it into your project's dependencies by running following code sample in terminal (in your react-native app):

npm install quickblox-react-native-sdk

iOS and Android have different dependencies systems. For that reason, you need to install dependencies in your iOS project. Navigate to ios/ folder in the root directory of the project and enter the following code snippet.

pod install

🚧

Make sure that iOS version in your project’s Podfile is not lower than 12.0 when installing SDK. Otherwise, CocoaPods will fail to find a compatible version of QuickBlox React Native SDK.

Send your first message

Initialize QuickBlox SDK

Initialize the SDK with your application credentials. Set the appId, authKey, authSecret, accountKey properties of the appSettings object. Call the init() method and pass the appSettings as an argument to it.

const appSettings = {
  appId: '76730',
  authKey: 'XydaWcf8OO9xhGT',
  authSecret: 'iiohfdija792hjt',
  accountKey: '7yvNe17TnjNUqDoPwfqp',
};

QB.settings
  .init(appSettings)
  .then(function () {
    // SDK initialized successfully
  })
  .catch(function (e) {
    // Some error occurred, look at the exception message for more details
  });

🚧

You must initialize SDK before calling any methods through the SDK, except for the init() method. If you attempt to call a method without initializing SDK previously, the error will be returned.

❗️

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 and initialize QuickBlox SDK with applicationId and acountKey only. More details you can find in Initialize QuickBlox SDK without Authorization Key and Secret section.

Authorize user

Now, it is time to log in with the user. To get it done, set the login and password properties of the loginParams object. Call the login() method and pass the loginParams as an argument to it using the code snippet below.

const loginParams = {
  login: 'yourlogin',
  password: 'yourpassword'
};

QB.auth
  .login(loginParams)
  .then(function (info) {
    // signed in successfully, handle info as necessary
    // info.user - user information
    // info.session - current session
  })
  .catch(function (e) {
    // handle error
  });

Connect to chat

Having authorized a user, you can proceed with connecting to the chat server to start using Chat module functionality. Set the userId and password properties of the connectParams object. Call the connect() method and pass the connectParams as an argument to it.

const connectParams = {
  userId: 12345,
  password: 'passw0rd!'
};

QB.chat
  .connect(connectParams)
  .then(function () {
    // connected successfully
  })
  .catch(function (e) {
    // some error occurred
  });

Create dialog

QuickBlox provides three types of dialogs: 1-1 dialog, group dialog, and public dialog. Learn more about dialogs here.

Let’s create a simple 1-1 dialog. Set the type and occupantsIds properties of the createDialogParams object. Call the createDialog() method and pass the createDialogParams as an argument to it.

const createDialogParams = {
  type: QB.chat.DIALOG_TYPE.CHAT,
  occupantsIds: [12345]
};

QB.chat
  .createDialog(createDialogParams)
  .then(function (dialog) {
    // handle as necessary, i.e.
    // subscribe to chat events, typing events, etc.
  })
  .catch(function (e) {
    // handle error
  });

Subscribe to receive messages

QuickBlox SDK emits events to notify about chat events. Thus, when a message has been received, a user receives the event from SDK about a new incoming message. To process events, you need to provide an event handler that SDK will call. See the code snippet below.

import { NativeEventEmitter } from 'react-native'

const eventHandler = (event) => {
  const { type, payload } = event
  // type - type of the event (string)
  // payload - new message (object)
} 

const emitter = new NativeEventEmitter(QB.chat)
emitter.addListener(
  QB.chat.EVENT_TYPE.MESSAGE.RECEIVED_NEW_MESSAGE,
  eventHandler
)

Send message

To send a message, set the dialogId and body properties of the message object. Call the sendMessage() method and pass the message as an argument.

const message = {
  dialogId: 'dsfsd934329hjhkda98793j2',
  body: 'Hey there!',
  saveToHistory: true
};

QB.chat
  .sendMessage(message)
  .then(function () { /* send successfully */ })
  .catch(function (e) { /* handle error */ })

📘

Set the saveToHistory parameter if you want this message to be saved in chat history.


What’s Next