This is documentation for Stream Chat React Native SDK v5, which is nolonger actively maintained. For up-to-date documentation, see the latest version (v6).

Custom Message Input

We provide the MessageInput container out of the box in a fixed configuration with many customizable features. Like other components, it accesses most customizations via contexts, especially the MessageInputContext, instantiated in the Channel component using its props. To customize the entire Input UI part of the MessageInput component, you can add a custom UI component as Input prop on the Channel component.

Changing layout of MessageInput

Let’s take a look at an example with the following requirements:

Stretch the input field to full width
Button to send a message, to open an attachment picker, and to open a commands picker below the input field
Disable the send button when the input field is empty

117057833 32553080 Ad1e 11eb 87bb 9b48b197ffd6

117057190 7136b680 Ad1d 11eb 8949 66ffba518883

117057179 6f6cf300 Ad1d 11eb 8c0f 994577448957

Disabled Send Button

Attached Image

Enabled Send Button

import {
  Channel,
  Chat,
  ImageUploadPreview,
  OverlayProvider,
  AutoCompleteInput,
  useMessageInputContext,
} from "stream-chat-react-native";

const client = StreamChat.getInstance("api_key");

const CustomInput = (props) => {
  const { sendMessage, text, toggleAttachmentPicker, openCommandsPicker } =
    useMessageInputContext();

  return (
    <View style={styles.fullWidth}>
      <ImageUploadPreview />
      <FileUploadPreview />
      <View style={[styles.fullWidth, styles.inputContainer]}>
        <AutoCompleteInput />
      </View>
      <View style={[styles.fullWidth, styles.row]}>
        <Button title="Attach" onPress={toggleAttachmentPicker} />
        <Button title="Commands" onPress={openCommandsPicker} />
        <Button title="Send" onPress={sendMessage} disabled={!text} />
      </View>
    </View>
  );
};

export const ChannelScreen = ({ channel }) => {
  const [channel, setChannel] = useState();

  return (
    <OverlayProvider>
      <Chat client={client}>
        {channel ? (
          <Channel channel={channel} Input={CustomInput}>
            {/** App components */}
          </Channel>
        ) : (
          <ChannelList onSelect={setChannel} />
        )}
      </Chat>
    </OverlayProvider>
  );
};

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  flex: { flex: 1 },
  fullWidth: {
    width: "100%",
  },
  row: {
    flexDirection: "row",
    justifyContent: "space-between",
  },
  inputContainer: {
    height: 40,
  },
});

You can also pass the same props as the context providers directly to the MessageInput component to override the context values. The code above would render the red View and not null as the props take precedence over the context value.

<Channel
  channel={channel}
  Input={() => null}
  keyboardVerticalOffset={headerHeight}
  Message={CustomMessageComponent}
>
  <View style={{ flex: 1 }}>
    <MessageList />
    <MessageInput
      Input={() => <View style={{ height: 40, backgroundColor: "red" }} />}
    />
  </View>
</Channel>

You can modify MessageInput in a wide variety of ways. The type definitions for the props give an insight into the available options. You can replace the Input in its entirety, as in the example above, or create your own MessageInput component using the provided hooks to access context.

NOTE: The additionalTextInputProps prop of both Channel and MessageInput is passed to the internal TextInput component from react-native. If you want to change the TextInput component props directly, this can be done using this prop.

Customizing nested components within MessageInput

Suppose you would like to replace a specific internal UI component of MessageInput; in that case, you can provide your UI component for the default component you want to replace as a prop to the Channel component. The following images show the prop names for replacing corresponding components. Within your custom UI implementation, you can access all the stateful information via the available contexts.

Custom Send Button

In the following example, let’s only replace a default SendButton with a custom implementation without altering the rest of the layout of MessageInput.

The Boat icon should replace the default send button
This custom button should be disabled if the user has not entered any text or attached any file


Send Button Disabled	Send Button Enabled

import { TouchableOpacity } from "react-native";
import {
  RootSvg,
  RootPath,
  Channel,
  useMessageInputContext,
} from "stream-chat-react-native";

const StreamButton = () => {
  const { sendMessage, text, imageUploads, fileUploads } =
    useMessageInputContext();
  const isDisabled = !text && !imageUploads.length && !fileUploads.length;

  return (
    <TouchableOpacity disabled={isDisabled} onPress={sendMessage}>
      <RootSvg height={21} width={42} viewBox="0 0 42 21">
        <RootPath
          d="M26.1491984,6.42806971 L38.9522984,5.52046971 C39.7973984,5.46056971 40.3294984,6.41296971 39.8353984,7.10116971 L30.8790984,19.5763697 C30.6912984,19.8379697 30.3888984,19.9931697 30.0667984,19.9931697 L9.98229842,19.9931697 C9.66069842,19.9931697 9.35869842,19.8384697 9.17069842,19.5773697 L0.190598415,7.10216971 C-0.304701585,6.41406971 0.227398415,5.46036971 1.07319842,5.52046971 L13.8372984,6.42816971 L19.2889984,0.333269706 C19.6884984,-0.113330294 20.3884984,-0.110730294 20.7846984,0.338969706 L26.1491984,6.42806971 Z M28.8303984,18.0152734 L20.5212984,14.9099734 L20.5212984,18.0152734 L28.8303984,18.0152734 Z M19.5212984,18.0152734 L19.5212984,14.9099734 L11.2121984,18.0152734 L19.5212984,18.0152734 Z M18.5624984,14.1681697 L10.0729984,17.3371697 L3.82739842,8.65556971 L18.5624984,14.1681697 Z M21.4627984,14.1681697 L29.9522984,17.3371697 L36.1978984,8.65556971 L21.4627984,14.1681697 Z M19.5292984,13.4435697 L19.5292984,2.99476971 L12.5878984,10.8305697 L19.5292984,13.4435697 Z M20.5212984,13.4435697 L20.5212984,2.99606971 L27.4627984,10.8305697 L20.5212984,13.4435697 Z M10.5522984,10.1082697 L12.1493984,8.31366971 L4.34669842,7.75446971 L10.5522984,10.1082697 Z M29.4148984,10.1082697 L27.8178984,8.31366971 L35.6205984,7.75446971 L29.4148984,10.1082697 Z"
          pathFill={isDisabled ? "grey" : "blue"}
        />
      </RootSvg>
    </TouchableOpacity>
  );
};

// In your App

<Channel channel={channel} SendButton={StreamButton} />;

Storing image and file attachment to custom CDN

When you select an image or file from the image picker or file picker, it gets uploaded to Stream’s CDN by default. You could, however, choose to upload attachments to your own CDN using the following two props on the Channel component:

doImageUploadRequest: For images picked from image picker
doDocUploadRequest: For files picked from file picker

<Channel
  doDocUploadRequest={(file, channel) =>
    chatClient?.sendFile(
      `${channel._channelURL()}/file`, // replace this with your own cdn url
      file.uri,
      "name_for_file",
    )
  }
  doImageUploadRequest={(file, channel) =>
    chatClient?.sendFile(
      `https://customcdnurl.com`, // replace this with your own cdn url
      file.uri,
      "name_for_file",
    )
  }
/>

The usage of chatClient?.sendFile is optional in the examples above. You may choose to use any HTTP client for uploading the file. Make sure to return a promise that resolves to an object with the key file that is the URL of the uploaded file.

For example:

{
  file: "https://us-east.stream-io-cdn.com/62344/images/a4f988f5-6a9c-47b0-aab9-7a27b74d7515.60D6041A-D012-4721-B794-19267B8F352B.jpg";
}

Disabling File Uploads or Image Uploads

There are three ways to disable file or image uploads from a React Native app:

From the Dashboard

Disabling uploads from the Dashboard is the recommended option to disallow image and file uploads in your chat application. You can find a toggle to disable Uploads on the Chat Overview page.

On the UI level

If you want to restrict uploads to either only images or only files, you can do so by providing one of the following two props to the Channel component:

hasFilePicker (boolean)
hasImagePicker (boolean)

Disable autocomplete features on input (mentions and commands)

By default, the autocomplete trigger settings include /, @, and : for slash commands, mentions, and emojis, respectively. These triggers are created by the exported function ACITriggerSettings, which takes ACITriggerSettingsParams and returns TriggerSettings. You can override this function to remove some or all of the trigger settings via the autoCompleteTriggerSettings prop on Channel. We suggest removing the commands button using the hasCommands prop on Channel if you remove the slash commands. You can remove all the commands by returning an empty object from the function given to autoCompleteTriggerSettings.

<Channel
  autoCompleteTriggerSettings={() => ({})}
  channel={channel}
  hasCommands={false}
  keyboardVerticalOffset={headerHeight}
  thread={thread}
>
  {/* Underlying components inside */}
</Channel>

Setting Additional Props on Underlying `TextInput` component

You can provide additionalTextInputProps prop to Channel or MessageInput component for adding additional props to underlying React Native’s TextInput component.

const additionalTextInputProps = useMemo(() => {
  selectionColor: "pink";
});

// Render UI part
<Channel channel={channel} additionalTextInputProps={additionalTextInputProps}>
  ...
</Channel>;

Customizing the slow mode CooldownTimer

Modifying styles through the theme

The default CooldownTimer can have it’s styles altered through the theme, using the following keys:

    <ThemeProvider style={{
      {/* ... your other styles */}
      messageInput: {
        cooldownTimer: {
          container: {
            {/* ViewStyle values */}
          },
          text: {
            {/* TextStyle values */}
          }
        }
      }
    }}>
    {/* Underlying components inside */}
    </ThemeProvider>

Creating a custom CooldownTimer

If a channel has slow mode enabled, the send button will be disabled when a user has sent a message, and a countdown will be displayed in its place. The built-in CooldownTimer component is styled to look like the disabled variant of the built-in send button, but you can replace the CooldownTimer to fit it to your needs.

To do so, first create your custom CooldownTimer component that accepts { seconds: number } as a prop, which is the current amount of seconds left until the cool-down finishes.

import { CooldownTimerProps } from 'stream-chat-react-native';

const CustomCooldownTimer = ({ seconds }: CooldownTimerProps) => {
  const isEven = seconds % 2 === 0;

  console.log(`There is an ${isEven ? 'even' : 'odd'} amount of seconds left`);

  return <Text>{seconds}</Text>;
};

You will then have to add your CustomCooldownTimer component as a prop to the Channel component in your application.

<Channel CooldownTimer={CustomCooldownTimer}>...</Channel>

Replacing AttachmentPicker With Native Image Picker

The attachment picker is rendered/displayed/opened inside of a bottom sheet by default. The default behavior can be easily replaced with the device’s native image picker (as shown in screenshots below).

Attachment Picker ActionSheet

Photo library

Channel component receives a prop AttachButton, which can be used to override the default attach button next to the input field as follows. This prop can be used to override the default onPress handler for the AttachButton component.

import { AttachButton, Channel } from "stream-chat-react-native";

const CustomAttachButton = () => {
  const onPressHandler = () => {
    // Custom handling of onPress action on AttachButton
  };

  return <AttachButton handleOnPress={onPressHandler} />;
};

<Channel AttachButton={CustomAttachButton} />;

To make the onPressHandler open the action sheet and show the options to choose attachments from Photo Library, Camera, or Files, you can use @expo/react-native-action-sheet package for the action sheet implemented in this example.

yarn add @expo/react-native-action-sheet

Please read through the documentation of @expo/react-native-action-sheet for more details.

import { AttachButton, Channel } from "stream-chat-react-native";
import {
  ActionSheetProvider,
  useActionSheet,
} from "@expo/react-native-action-sheet";

const CustomAttachButton = () => {
  const { showActionSheetWithOptions } = useActionSheet();

  const onPressHandler = () => {
    // Same interface as https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/actionsheetios.html
    showActionSheetWithOptions(
      {
        cancelButtonIndex: 3,
        destructiveButtonIndex: 3,
        options: ["Photo Library", "Camera", "Files", "Cancel"],
      },
      (buttonIndex) => {
        switch (buttonIndex) {
          case 0:
            break;
          case 1:
            break;
          case 2:
            break;
          default:
            break;
        }
      },
    );
  };

  return <AttachButton handleOnPress={onPressHandler} />;
};

<ActionSheetProvider>
  <Channel AttachButton={CustomAttachButton} />
</ActionSheetProvider>;

Now let’s hook the relevant action handlers for buttons within ActionSheet. react-native-image-crop-picker provides an image picker functionality with good support for configurable compression, multiple images and cropping. And selected images from image picker or camera can be wired in with upload previews (ImageUploadPreview) within MessageInput component by using a function uploadNewImage provided by MessageInputContext.

For file attachments, the SDK defaults to the native file picker. That can be reused by adding the pickFile function provided by the MessageInputContext as an action handler within the action sheet.

import {
  AttachButton,
  Channel,
  useMessageInputContext,
} from "stream-chat-react-native";
import {
  ActionSheetProvider,
  useActionSheet,
} from "@expo/react-native-action-sheet";
import ImagePicker from "react-native-image-crop-picker";

const CustomAttachButton = () => {
  const { showActionSheetWithOptions } = useActionSheet();
  const { pickFile, uploadNewImage } = useMessageInputContext();

  const pickImageFromGallery = () =>
    ImagePicker.openPicker({
      multiple: true,
    }).then((images) =>
      images.forEach((image) =>
        uploadNewImage({
          uri: image.path,
        }),
      ),
    );

  const pickImageFromCamera = () =>
    ImagePicker.openCamera({
      cropping: true,
    }).then((image) =>
      uploadNewImage({
        uri: image.path,
      }),
    );

  const onPress = () => {
    // Same interface as https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/actionsheetios.html
    showActionSheetWithOptions(
      {
        cancelButtonIndex: 3,
        destructiveButtonIndex: 3,
        options: ["Photo Library", "Camera", "Files", "Cancel"],
      },
      (buttonIndex) => {
        switch (buttonIndex) {
          case 0:
            pickImageFromGallery();
            break;
          case 1:
            pickImageFromCamera();
            break;
          case 2:
            pickFile();
            break;
          default:
            break;
        }
      },
    );
  };

  return <AttachButton handleOnPress={onPress} />;
};

<ActionSheetProvider>
  <Channel AttachButton={CustomAttachButton} />
</ActionSheetProvider>;

Creating a Custom Editing state Header in MessageInput

To make a custom editing state header, you can use the Channel component with a custom Editing state header component and pass it inside InputEditingStateHeader prop.

import { Button, Text, View } from "react-native";
import { Channel, useMessageInputContext } from "stream-chat-react-native";

const CustomInputEditingStateHeader = () => {
  const { clearEditingState, resetInput } = useMessageInputContext();
  return (
    <View>
      <Text>Editing Header</Text>
      <Button
        onPress={() => {
          clearEditingState();
          resetInput();
        }}
        title="Close"
      />
    </View>
  );
};

<Channel
  channel={channel}
  InputEditingStateHeader={CustomInputEditingStateHeader}
>
  {/* The underlying components */}
</Channel>;

Creating a Custom reply state Header in MessageInput

To make a custom reply state header, you can use the Channel component with a custom Reply state header component and pass it inside InputReplyStateHeader prop.

import { Button, Text, View } from "react-native";
import { Channel, useMessageInputContext } from "stream-chat-react-native";

const CustomInputReplyStateHeader = () => {
  const { clearQuotedMessageState, resetInput } = useMessageInputContext();
  return (
    <View>
      <Text>Reply Header</Text>
      <Button
        onPress={() => {
          clearQuotedMessageState();
          resetInput();
        }}
        title="Close"
      />
    </View>
  );
};

<Channel channel={channel} InputReplyStateHeader={CustomInputReplyStateHeader}>
  {/* The underlying components */}
</Channel>;

Creating a custom Giphy search input inside MessageInput

To make a custom Giphy search input, you can use the Channel component with a custom Giphy Search component and pass it inside InputGiphySearch prop.

import { Button, Text, View } from "react-native";
import {
  AutoCompleteInput,
  Channel,
  useMessageInputContext,
} from "stream-chat-react-native";

const CustomInputGiphySearch = () => {
  const { setGiphyActive, setShowMoreOptions } = useMessageInputContext();

  return (
    <View>
      <Text style={{ textAlign: "center" }}>Giphy</Text>
      <AutoCompleteInput />
      <Button
        onPress={() => {
          setGiphyActive(false);
          setShowMoreOptions(true);
        }}
        title="Close"
      />
    </View>
  );
};

<Channel channel={channel} InputGiphySearch={CustomInputGiphySearch}>
  {/* The underlying components */}
</Channel>;

Compress File before upload

Stream supports uploading images and files and the maximum size to upload is 100 MB. It can be useful in certain cases to compress a file before upload so that the 100 MB limit is not reached. This is especially true when uploading Video.

You can use the following two props on the Channel component to compress the file before upload:

doImageUploadRequest: For images
doDocUploadRequest: For any files other than images

For example, let us look at how to compress a video file before uploading. In the snippet below, we have used the react-native-compressor library to perform video compression before the video file is uploaded.

import { Channel, ChannelProps } from 'stream-chat-react-native';
import { Video as VideoCompressor } from 'react-native-compressor';

const customDoDocUploadRequest: NonNullable<ChannelProps['doDocUploadRequest']> = async (
  file,
  channel,
) => {
  if (!file.uri) {
    throw new Error('Invalid file provided');
  }
  // check if it is a video file using the MIME type
  if (file.mimeType?.startsWith('video/')) {
    const result = await VideoCompressor.compress(file.uri, {
      compressionMethod: 'auto',
    });
    // set the local file uri to the compressed file
    file.uri = result;
  }

  // send the file
  return await channel.sendFile(file.uri, file.name, file.mimeType);
};

<Channel channel={channel} doDocUploadRequest={customDoDocUploadRequest}>

Custom MessageList

Custom Autocomplete Suggestion List