Android Chat UI

This is meant to ease the life of any developer looking to add chat functionality into his/her Android application and wouldn't like to worry so much about setting up the UI.

This library is still in it's very early stages, but improvements would come over time.

Note: This is merely a UI library, messages being actually sent and recieved by your application still needs to be implemented.

Version

v0.1.2

Installation

Add this to your root build.gradle at the end of repositories:

allprojects {
	repositories {
		...
		maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
	}
}

Then add the dependency

dependencies {
	compile 'com.github.timigod:android-chat-ui:v0.1.3'
}

Usage

Drop the ChatView in your XML layout as is shown below:

<co.intentservice.chatui.ChatView
	android:id="@+id/chat_view"
	android:layout_width="match_parent"
	android:layout_height="match_parents"
	<!-- Insert customisation options here -->
/>

Remember to add this attribute to your root layout.

xmlns:chatview="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"

And then in your Activity or Fragment you can get the instance of the ChatView by doing:

ChatView chatView = (ChatView) findViewById(R.id.chat_view);

Customization

You can customize the appearance of this view by using the following attributes.

chatview:backgroundColor=""
chatview:inputBackgroundColor=""
chatview:inputUseEditorAction="" // true or false
chatview:inputTextAppearance=""
chatview:inputTextSize=""
chatview:inputTextColor=""
chatview:inputHintColor=""
chatview:sendBtnIcon="" 
chatview:sendBtnIconTint=""
chatview:sendBtnBackgroundTint=""

chatview:bubbleBackgroundRcv="" // color
chatview:bubbleBackgroundSend="" //color
chatview:bubbleElevation="" // "flat" or "elevated"

Sending messages

You can detect when a user clicks the "send" action button by using the OnSentMessageListener.

chatView.setOnSentMessageListener(new ChatView.OnSentMessageListener(){
	@Override
	public boolean sendMessage(ChatMessage chatMessage){
		// perform actual message sending 
		return true;
	}
});

In the method sendMessage(), you can now perform whatever logic to send messages i.e make an HTTP request or send the message over a socket connection.

Depending on whatever logic or validation you put in place, you may return true or false. true will update the ChatView with the message bubble and false will do the opposite.

Receiving messages

You can use the chatView.addMessage(ChatMessage message) to add a "received" message to the UI. This obviously should be done after whatever mechanisms you have in place have actually received a message.

You can use this method or chatView.addMessages(ArrayList<ChatMessage> messages) to add messages to the UI.

The side the chat bubble will appear on is determined by the Type of the ChatMessage.

Deleting messages

You can remove messages using chatView.removeMessage(int position) or chatView.clearMessages()

The ChatMessage class

ChatMessage holds all the relevant data about your message: String message, long timestamp and Type type. Type is an enum that can either be SENT or RECEIVED.

It is the Type that determines what side of the UI the bubble will appear.

Typing Listener

You can detect different states of the user's typing activity by using TypingListener.

chatView.setTypingListener(new ChatView.TypingListener(){
	@Override
	public void userStartedTyping(){
		// will be called when the user starts typing
	}
	
	@Override
	public void userStoppedTyping(){
		// will be called when the user stops typing
	}
});

TODO

This is list of things that are in the works for this library:

Theming

message TextAppearance (sent / received messages)
timestamp TextAppearance (sent / received messages)
The ability to use an image as the background for the ChatView

Functionality

Ability to use custom item layout
Ability to send and recieve multimedia messages like images, embedded locations and even videos.
Ability to track and update individual messages (Useful to be able to show delivered/read/unread status or the like)

Of course, additions to this library aren't limited to the above.

Contributing

We welcome any and all contributions, code cleanups and feature requests.

Check for open issues or open a fresh issue to start a discussion around a feature idea or a bug.
Fork the repository on GitHub to start making your changes to the master branch (or branch off of it).
Send a pull request and bug the maintainer until it gets merged and published. :).

xdartxvictor/android-chat-ui