# Chats Chats are a way to represent an IM-style conversation between two actors. They are not the same as direct messages and they are not `Status`es, even though they have a lot in common. ## Why Chats? There are no 'visibility levels' in ActivityPub, their definition is purely a Mastodon convention. Direct Messaging between users on the fediverse has mostly been modeled by using ActivityPub addressing following Mastodon conventions on normal `Note` objects. In this case, a 'direct message' would be a message that has no followers addressed and also does not address the special public actor, but just the recipients in the `to` field. It would still be a `Note` and is presented with other `Note`s as a `Status` in the API. This is an awkward setup for a few reasons: - As DMs generally still follow the usual `Status` conventions, it is easy to accidentally pull somebody into a DM thread by mentioning them. (e.g. "I hate @badguy so much") - It is possible to go from a publicly addressed `Status` to a DM reply, back to public, then to a 'followers only' reply, and so on. This can be become very confusing, as it is unclear which user can see which part of the conversation. - The standard `Status` format of implicit addressing also leads to rather ugly results if you try to display the messages as a chat, because all the recipients are always mentioned by name in the message. - As direct messages are posted with the same api call (and usually same frontend component) as public messages, accidentally making a public message private or vice versa can happen easily. Client bugs can also lead to this, accidentally making private messages public. As a measure to improve this situation, the `Conversation` concept and related Akkoma extensions were introduced. While it made it possible to work around a few of the issues, many of the problems remained and it didn't see much adoption because it was too complicated to use correctly. ## Chats explained For this reasons, Chats are a new and different entity, both in the API as well as in ActivityPub. A quick overview: - Chats are meant to represent an instant message conversation between two actors. For now these are only 1-on-1 conversations, but the other actor can be a group in the future. - Chat messages have the ActivityPub type `ChatMessage`. They are not `Note`s. Servers that don't understand them will just drop them. - The only addressing allowed in `ChatMessage`s is one single ActivityPub actor in the `to` field. - There's always only one Chat between two actors. If you start chatting with someone and later start a 'new' Chat, the old Chat will be continued. - `ChatMessage`s are posted with a different api, making it very hard to accidentally send a message to the wrong person. - `ChatMessage`s don't show up in the existing timelines. - Chats can never go from private to public. They are always private between the two actors. ## Caveats - Chats are NOT E2E encrypted (yet). Security is still the same as email. ## API In general, the way to send a `ChatMessage` is to first create a `Chat`, then post a message to that `Chat`. `Group`s will later be supported by making them a sub-type of `Account`. This is the overview of using the API. The API is also documented via OpenAPI, so you can view it and play with it by pointing SwaggerUI or a similar OpenAPI tool to `https://yourinstance.tld/api/openapi`. ### Creating or getting a chat. To create or get an existing Chat for a certain recipient (identified by Account ID) you can call: `POST /api/v1/pleroma/chats/by-account-id/:account_id` The account id is the normal FlakeId of the user ``` POST /api/v1/pleroma/chats/by-account-id/someflakeid ``` If you already have the id of a chat, you can also use ``` GET /api/v1/pleroma/chats/:id ``` There will only ever be ONE Chat for you and a given recipient, so this call will return the same Chat if you already have one with that user. Returned data: ```json { "account": { "id": "someflakeid", "username": "somenick", ... }, "id" : "1", "unread" : 2, "last_message" : {...}, // The last message in that chat "updated_at": "2020-04-21T15:11:46.000Z" } ``` ### Marking a chat as read To mark a number of messages in a chat up to a certain message as read, you can use `POST /api/v1/pleroma/chats/:id/read` Parameters: - last_read_id: Given this id, all chat messages until this one will be marked as read. Required. Returned data: ```json { "account": { "id": "someflakeid", "username": "somenick", ... }, "id" : "1", "unread" : 0, "updated_at": "2020-04-21T15:11:46.000Z" } ``` ### Marking a single chat message as read To set the `unread` property of a message to `false` `POST /api/v1/pleroma/chats/:id/messages/:message_id/read` Returned data: The modified chat message ### Getting a list of Chats `GET /api/v1/pleroma/chats` This will return a list of chats that you have been involved in, sorted by their last update (so new chats will be at the top). Parameters: - with_muted: Include chats from muted users (boolean). Returned data: ```json [ { "account": { "id": "someflakeid", "username": "somenick", ... }, "id" : "1", "unread" : 2, "last_message" : {...}, // The last message in that chat "updated_at": "2020-04-21T15:11:46.000Z" } ] ``` The recipient of messages that are sent to this chat is given by their AP ID. No pagination is implemented for now. ### Getting the messages for a Chat For a given Chat id, you can get the associated messages with `GET /api/v1/pleroma/chats/:id/messages` This will return all messages, sorted by most recent to least recent. The usual pagination options are implemented. Returned data: ```json [ { "account_id": "someflakeid", "chat_id": "1", "content": "Check this out :firefox:", "created_at": "2020-04-21T15:11:46.000Z", "emojis": [ { "shortcode": "firefox", "static_url": "https://dontbulling.me/emoji/Firefox.gif", "url": "https://dontbulling.me/emoji/Firefox.gif", "visible_in_picker": false } ], "id": "13", "unread": true }, { "account_id": "someflakeid", "chat_id": "1", "content": "Whats' up?", "created_at": "2020-04-21T15:06:45.000Z", "emojis": [], "id": "12", "unread": false, "idempotency_key": "75442486-0874-440c-9db1-a7006c25a31f" } ] ``` - idempotency_key: The copy of the `idempotency-key` HTTP request header that can be used for optimistic message sending. Included only during the first few minutes after the message creation. ### Posting a chat message Posting a chat message for given Chat id works like this: `POST /api/v1/pleroma/chats/:id/messages` Parameters: - content: The text content of the message. Optional if media is attached. - media_id: The id of an upload that will be attached to the message. Currently, no formatting beyond basic escaping and emoji is implemented. Returned data: ```json { "account_id": "someflakeid", "chat_id": "1", "content": "Check this out :firefox:", "created_at": "2020-04-21T15:11:46.000Z", "emojis": [ { "shortcode": "firefox", "static_url": "https://dontbulling.me/emoji/Firefox.gif", "url": "https://dontbulling.me/emoji/Firefox.gif", "visible_in_picker": false } ], "id": "13", "unread": false } ``` ### Deleting a chat message Deleting a chat message for given Chat id works like this: `DELETE /api/v1/pleroma/chats/:chat_id/messages/:message_id` Returned data is the deleted message. ### Notifications There's a new `pleroma:chat_mention` notification, which has this form. It is not given out in the notifications endpoint by default, you need to explicitly request it with `include_types[]=pleroma:chat_mention`: ```json { "id": "someid", "type": "pleroma:chat_mention", "account": { ... } // User account of the sender, "chat_message": { "chat_id": "1", "id": "10", "content": "Hello", "account_id": "someflakeid", "unread": false }, "created_at": "somedate" } ``` ### Streaming There is an additional `user:pleroma_chat` stream. Incoming chat messages will make the current chat be sent to this `user` stream. The `event` of an incoming chat message is `pleroma:chat_update`. The payload is the updated chat with the incoming chat message in the `last_message` field. ### Web Push If you want to receive push messages for this type, you'll need to add the `pleroma:chat_mention` type to your alerts in the push subscription.