Channel Management

Channel Members

When a user joins a channel, they are able to observe and chat with other users in that channel. They are also automatically considered a member of that channel. The Chat SDK provides the ability to view which users are currently in the channel as well as invite other users to join the channel.

Channel Type	Discoverable by	Message sending privileges	Moderation access	SDK Supported
Community	All users and admins	Users and admins	All Moderation tools	Yes
Live	Only members and admins	Users and admins	All Moderation tools	Yes
Broadcast	All users and admins	Admins	Admin Moderation tools	No
Conversation	Only members	Users	No Moderation tools	Yes

Each channel is identified by a unique channelId, which is any string that uniquely identifies the channel and is immutable through its lifetime. When creating channels, you can specify your own channelId, or leave it to Amity to automatically generate one for you.

There are 4 channel types:

• Community: a channel that is discoverable by all users

• Live: a channel that is discoverable only if user is already added as a member

• Broadcast: a channel that limits message creation to only Admin user. Message can only be created from Console

• Conversation: a one-to-one chat that once created will not be available on Admin panel

There are three ways of obtaining an AmityChannel object: via,

• create method

• join method

• get method

AmityChannel management methods are all contained in the AmityChannelRepository class. To get an instance of AmityChannelRepository:

Create Community Channel

The SDK provides 2 typical ways of channel creation.

1. Channel creation with specific channelId.

2. Channel creation with auto-generation of channelId.

The channel creation API guarantees that the requested channel is a new channel. If the channel already exists, the error will be an AmityExceptionwith code 400900

The createChannel() method initiates channel creation method chain and let you choose which channel type to be created.

To let SDK handle channelId generation, uses withDisplayName() method to skip channelId specification.

Create Live Channel

The SDK provides 2 typical ways of channel creation.

1. Channel creation with specific channelId.

2. Channel creation with auto-generation of channelId.

The channel creation API guarantees that the requested channel is a new channel. If the channel already exists, the error will be an AmityExceptionwith code 400900

The createChannel() method initiates channel creation method chain and let you choose which channel type to be created.

To let SDK handle channelId generation, uses withDisplayName() method to skip channelId specification.

Create Conversation

Channel of type Conversation can also be created with createChannel() method chain. However, the channelId is always being generated by SDK.

To create a conversation channel with a user, pass the user's userId to withUserId() method.

Conversation channel is unique based on its membership. When creating conversation, the system will check if a channel with the same membership already exists. If such channel already exists, the system will return the existing channel instead of creating a new one.

Join Channel

The joinChannel() method will add the active user as a member of the channel.

This API can be called as many times as needed. If the channel has already been joined, a "success" result will be returned, ie., going into doOnSuccess{}block.

Get Channel

In the case where you only want to fetch a channel's data without joining, you can use the getChannel() method:

Channel Query

The AmityChannelRepository provides the getChannels() method which initiates channel query method chain. The query returns Flowable<PagedList<AmityChannel>> representing all matching channels available.

Channel Filtering

• the filter() method lets you filter channels based on the current user membership status

• the includingTags() and excludingTags() methods let you filter channels based on the tags set (or not set) in each channel

Edit Channel

All channels have the following properties:

• Channel display name

• Channel Avatar

• Tags

• Metada

Edit Data

Every channel contains an optional displayName , avatar and tags property with the following method:

Edit Metadata

Metadata is a general purpose data store that is automatically synchronized to all users of a channel. It is designed to store contextual information about a specific channel. The metadata is a JSON object which can store any number of JSON key-value pairs up to 100 kb. Example use cases include:

• Conversation title or cover photo

• Global conversation settings

Metadata is implemented with last writer wins semantics on the entire store. This means that multiple mutations by independent users to the metadata object will result in a single stored value. The metadata object set by last user overrides any previous values. No locking, merging, or other coordination is performed across participants.

To set metadata, simply call the following method:

Leave Channel

The leaveChannel() method will remove the active user as a member of the channel. If a user leaves a channel, the user can't receive messages from the channel anymore.

Delete Channel

Deleting a channel is not supported in SDK. Refer to this section for the instructions on how to delete a channel via API.