Message Actions API for Android SDK

Use message actions to add or remove metadata on published messages. Common uses include receipts and reactions. Clients subscribe to a channel to receive message action events. Clients can also fetch past message actions from Message Persistence, either on demand or when fetching original messages.

Reactions

"Message Reactions" is a specific application of the Message Actions API for emoji or social reactions.

Message Actions vs. Message Reactions

Message Actions is the flexible, low-level API for adding any metadata to messages (read receipts, delivery confirmations, custom data), while Message Reactions specifically refers to using Message Actions for emoji/social reactions.

In PubNub Core and Chat SDKs, the same underlying Message Actions API is referred to as Message Reactions when used for emoji reactions - it's the same functionality, just different terminology depending on the use case.

Add message action

Requires Message Persistence

Enable Message Persistence for your key in the Admin Portal as described in the support article.

Add an action to a published message. The response includes the added action.

Method(s)

Use this Android method:

this.pubnub.addMessageAction()
    .channel(String)
    .messageAction(PNMessageAction);

* required

Parameter	Description
channel * Type: String	Channel name to add the message action to.
messageAction * Type: PNMessageAction	Message action payload (type, value, message timetoken).
async * Type: PNCallback	Callback of type PNAddMessageActionResult.

Sample code

pubnub.addMessageAction()
        .channel("my_channel")
        .messageAction(new PNMessageAction()
                .setType("reaction")
                .setValue("smiley_face")
                .setMessageTimetoken(15701761818730000L)
        )
        .async(new PNCallback<PNAddMessageActionResult>() {
            @Override
            public void onResponse(PNAddMessageActionResult result, PNStatus status) {
                if (!status.isError()) {
                    System.out.println(result.getType());
                    System.out.println(result.getValue());
                    System.out.println(result.getUuid());
                    System.out.println(result.getActionTimetoken());

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Returns

The addMessageAction() operation returns a PNAddMessageActionResult which contains the following operations:

Method	Description
getType() Type: String	Message action type.
getValue() Type: String	Message action value.
getUuid() Type: String	Publisher of the message action.
getActionTimetoken() Type: Long	Timestamp when the message action was created.
getMessageTimetoken() Type: Long	Timestamp when the message was created that the action belongs to.

PNMessageAction

Method	Description
setType() Type: String	Message action type.
setValue() Type: String	Message action value.
setMessageTimetoken() Type: Long	Timetoken of the target message.

Remove message action

Requires Message Persistence

Enable Message Persistence for your key in the Admin Portal as described in the support article.

Remove a previously added action from a published message. The response is empty.

Method(s)

Use this Android method:

this.pubnub.removeMessageAction()
    .channel(String)
    .messageTimetoken(Long)
    .actionTimetoken(Long);

* required

Parameter	Description
channel * Type: String	Channel name to remove the message action from.
messageTimetoken * Type: Long	Timetoken of the target message.
actionTimetoken * Type: Long	Timetoken of the message action to remove.
async * Type: PNCallback	Callback of type PNRemoveMessageActionResult.

Sample code

pubnub.removeMessageAction()
        .channel("my_channel")
        .messageTimetoken(15701761818730000L)
        .actionTimetoken(15701775691010000L)
        .async(new PNCallback<PNRemoveMessageActionResult>() {
            @Override
            public void onResponse(PNRemoveMessageActionResult result, PNStatus status) {
                if (!status.isError()) {
                    // result has no actionable data
                    // it's enough to check if the status itself is not an error
                } else {
                    status.getErrorData().getThrowable().printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        });

Returns

The removeMessageAction() operation returns no actionable data.

Get message actions

Requires Message Persistence

Enable Message Persistence for your key in the Admin Portal as described in the support article.

Get a list of message actions in a channel. The response sorts actions by the action timetoken in ascending order.

Truncated response

The number of message actions in the response may be truncated when internal limits are hit. If the response is truncated, a more property is returned with additional parameters. Send iterative calls to Message Persistence, adjusting the parameters to fetch more message actions.

Method(s)

Use this Android method:

this.pubnub.getMessageActions()
    .channel(String)
    .start(Long)
    .end(Long)
    .limit(Integer);

* required

Parameter	Description
channel * Type: String Default: n/a	Channel name to list message actions for.
start Type: Long Default: n/a	Message action timetoken for the start of the range (exclusive).
end Type: Long Default: n/a	Message action timetoken for the end of the range (inclusive).
limit Type: Integer Default: 100	Maximum number of actions to return. Default/Maximum is 100.
async * Type: PNCallback Default: n/a	Callback of type PNGetMessageActionsResult.

Sample code

pubnub.getMessageActions()
        .channel("my_channel")
        .async(new PNCallback<PNGetMessageActionsResult>() {
            @Override
            public void onResponse(PNGetMessageActionsResult result, PNStatus status) {
                if (!status.isError()) {
                    List<PNMessageAction> actions = result.getActions();
                    for (PNMessageAction action : actions) {
                        System.out.println(action.getType());
                        System.out.println(action.getValue());
                        System.out.println(action.getUuid());
                        System.out.println(action.getActionTimetoken());
                        System.out.println(action.getMessageTimetoken());
                    }
                } else {

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Returns

The getMessageActions() operation returns a list of PNGetMessageActionsResult objects, each containing the following operations:

Method	Description
getType() Type: String	Message action type.
getValue() Type: String	Message action value.
getUuid() Type: String	Publisher of the message action.
getActionTimetoken() Type: Long	Timestamp when the message action was created.
getMessageTimetoken() Type: Long	Timestamp when the message was created that the action belongs to.

Other examples

Fetch messages with paging

public static void main(String args[]){
    getMessageActionsWithPaging("my_channel", System.currentTimeMillis() * 10_000L, new Callback() {
            @Override
            public void onMore(List<PNMessageAction> actions) {
                System.out.println("Next set of actions: " + actions.size());
            }

            @Override
            public void onDone() {
                System.out.println("All actions fetched");
            }
        });
}

/**

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