How do I retrieve unread messages? - Chat

There are two main approaches depending on your use case :

• Get unread counts on client level :   [Getstream.io Unread documentation article]

  • Retrieve unread count on user connection:   
      Total unread messages count AND unread channel count for a user are returned with the response when you setUser() with our API :
    

    const user = await client.connectUser({ id: 'myid' }, token);
    
    // response.me.total_unread_count returns the unread count
    // response.me.unread_channels returns the count of channels with unread messages 

     
  • Retrieve unread count using client level events :
    To support updating the unread count in realtime, you can listen to these events.

    1. notification.added_to_channel

    2. notification.removed_from_channel

    3. notification.message_new

    4. notification.mark_read

    All 4 of these events include the fields: total_unread_count and unread_channels. You can listen to them all at once like this:

    client.on((event) => {
     if (event.total_unread_count !== undefined) {
     console.log(event.total_unread_count);
     }
    
    if (event.unread_channels !== undefined) {
     console.log(event.unread_channels);
     }
    });

• Get unread counts on channel level: [Getstream.io Unread channel documentation article]

  • Retrieve unread messages count per channel, for the current user on the channel: Unread_messages_per_channel
  • Retrieve the count of unread messages mentioning the current user on a channel: Unread_mentions_per_channel
  • Retrieve unread count using notification events :

    currentChannel.on('message.new', (e) => { 
      if (event.total_unread_count !== null) {
       console.log(`unread messages count is now: ${event.total_unread_count}`);
      }
      if (event.unread_channels !== null) {
       console.log(`unread channels count is now: ${event.unread_channels}`);
      }
    });

Please find below, our Blog tutorial on Stream Chat and Webhooks illustrating a message.new event usage :
How to Efficiently Use Webhooks and Stream Chat  

Preconditions for a channel to be considered unread

Here are some of the conditions to be checked for before considering a channel as unread -

• The user needs to be a member of the channel
• The channel should not be muted
• The channel has unread messages OR If the channel has more messages after timestamp - channel.lastRead which gets set when you call channel.markRead().
  • SDKs handle it by calling channel.markRead() whenever you open a channel

For the initial value, make use of the client.user.unread_channels to access the unread channel count.