Getting Started
Choose your platform to get started:Chat Features
Ably Chat provides the following key features:Rooms and Messages
Rooms are used to organize and separate your users and chat messages into ‘chat rooms’. They are the entry object into chat and provide access to all other chat features, such as messages, online status, and typing indicators. Each room can represent a 1:1 chat between an agent and a customer, a private message between two users in a chat application, a group conversation, or the chat section of a livestream with thousands of users. Messages enable users to communicate with one another in the room. Messages sent by users are received by all those who have subscribed to receive them within that room.Presence
Presence enables you to display who is currently online in a chat room. Users can also set additional information about their profile such as a status message, profile picture, display name, and more.Typing Indicators
Typing indicators let users see when others start and stop typing a message. They enable you to display a message such as John is typing… or when too many users are typing, something like Multiple people are typing… or 12 people are typing….Room Reactions
Room reactions enable users to broadcast ephemeral sentiments using emojis, such as 👍 or ❤. Room reactions are used to broadcast a general sentiment to the entire room rather than reacting to a single message. A common use case is sports fans all sending a heart when their team scores.Room Occupancy
Room occupancy enables you to display the number of users currently online in a room. This feature can be used to display user counts to highlight popular or trending chat rooms.React UI Kit
React UI Kit provides pre-built, customizable React components that make it even faster to add chat functionality to your applications. These components handle the presentation layer and user interactions, allowing you to focus on your application logic rather than building chat UI from scratch. The UI Kit includes components for message lists, input fields, user avatars, typing indicators, and more. They’re designed to be flexible and themeable to match your application’s design system.React Hooks
React Hooks provide a set of custom hooks that integrate seamlessly with React applications. These hooks manage the state and lifecycle of chat features, making it simple to build reactive chat interfaces that automatically update when new messages arrive or user presence changes.Demo
Take a look at a livestream basketball game with some simulated users chatting built using the Chat SDK. The source code is available in GitHub.Next Steps
- Explore the SDK setup guide
- Learn about authentication
- Start building with the getting started guides