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Start your first conversation

CometChat UI Kit for Android is a collection of prebuilt UI components designed to simplify the development of an in-app chat with all the essential messaging features. Our UI Kit offers light and dark themes, various fonts, colors, and additional customization options. CometChat UI Kit supports both one-to-one and group conversations. Follow the guide below to initiate conversations from scratch using CometChat Android UI Kit.

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Prerequisites

Before installing the UI Kit, you need to create a CometChat application on the CometChat Dashboard, which includes all the necessary data for a chat service, such as users, groups, calls, and messages. You will require the App ID, AuthKey, and Region of your CometChat application when initializing the SDK. i. Register on CometChat ii. Get Your Application Keys
  • Create a new app
  • Head over to the QuickStart or API & Auth Keys section and note the App ID, Auth Key, and Region.
iii. IDE Setup
  • You have Android Studio installed on your machine.
  • You have an Android device or emulator with Android version 6.0 or above.
  • Android 5.0 (API level 21) or higher is installed.
  • Java 8 or higher is installed.
  • Android Gradle plugin 4.0.1 or higher is installed.

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Getting Started

Step 1

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Create a project

To get started, open Android Studio and create a new project for UI Kit in the Project window as follows:
  1. Click Start a new Android Studio project in the Welcome to Android Studio window.
  2. Select Empty Activity in the Select a Project Template window and click Next.
  3. Enter your project name in the Name field in the Configure your project window.
  4. Select your language as either Java or Kotlin from the Language drop-down menu.
  5. Select minimum API level as 21 or higher.
Step 2

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Add Dependency

This developer kit is an add-on feature to the CometChat Android SDK, so installing it will also install the core Chat SDK. Open the project-level settings.gradle file and add the following repository URL in the repositories block under the repositories section.
settings.gradle
dependencyResolutionManagement {
    repositoriesMode.set(RepositoriesMode.FAIL_ON_PROJECT_REPOS)
    repositories {
        google()
        mavenCentral()
        maven{
            url "https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/cometchat/cometchat/maven/"
        }
    }
}
Open the app-level build.gradle file and add your package name as indicated in the code.
build.gradle
android {
    defaultConfig {
	...
	manifestPlaceholders = [file_provider: "YOUR_PACKAGE_NAME"] //add your application package.
    }
}
Open the app level build.gradle file and add the following dependency to fetch the chat UI kit into your project.
build.gradle
dependencies {
    implementation 'com.cometchat:chat-uikit-android:4.3.18'
}
Open the gradle.properties file and verify if the specified line is present. If not, add it accordingly.
gradle.properties
android.enableJetifier=true
Step 3

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Initialize CometChatUIkit

To integrate and run CometChat UI Kit in your app, you need to initialize it beforehand. The Init method initializes the settings required for CometChat. Please ensure to call this method before invoking any other methods from CometChat UI Kit or CometChat SDK.
The Auth Key is an optional property of the UIKitSettings Class. It is intended for use primarily during proof-of-concept (POC) development or in the early stages of application development. You can use Auth Token method to login securely.
YourActivity.java
String appID = "APP_ID"; // Replace with your App ID
String region = "REGION"; // Replace with your App Region ("EU" or "US")
String authKey= "AUTH_KEY"; // Replace with your Auth Key or leave blank if you are authenticating using Auth Token

UIKitSettings uiKitSettings = new UIKitSettings.UIKitSettingsBuilder()
.setRegion(region)
.setAppId(appID)
.setAuthKey(authKey)
.subscribePresenceForAllUsers().build();

CometChatUIKit.init(this, uiKitSettings, new CometChat.CallbackListener<String>() {
@Override
public void onSuccess(String successString) {/_Your action after initializing CometChat_/}

    @Override
    public void onError(CometChatException e) {}

});
Make sure to replace the APP_ID with your CometChat appId, AUTH_KEY with your CometChat app auth key and REGION with your app region in the above code.
Step 4

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Login User

For login, you require a UID. You can create your own users on the CometChat Dashboard or via API. We have pre-generated test users: cometchat-uid-1, cometchat-uid-2, cometchat-uid-3, cometchat-uid-4, cometchat-uid-5. The login() method returns the User object containing all the information of the logged-in user.
This straightforward authentication method is ideal for proof-of-concept (POC) development or during the early stages of application development. For production environments, however, we strongly recommend using an Auth Token instead of an Auth Key to ensure enhanced security.
YourActivity.java
CometChatUIKit.login("cometchat-uid-1", new CometChat.CallbackListener<User>() {
    @Override
    public void onSuccess(User user) {
       Log.d(TAG, "Login Successful : " + user.toString());
    }

    @Override
    public void onError(CometChatException e) {
        Log.e(TAG, "Login Failed : " + e.getMessage());
    }

});
It will be easier for you to open a new activity upon successful login.
Step 5

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Render Conversation With Message

ConversationsWithMessages is a wrapper component that offers functionality to render both the Conversations and Messages components. It also enables opening the Messages by tapping on any conversation rendered in the list of conversations.
ConversationsWithMessages can be rendered by adding the following code snippet into the layout_activity.xml file: 
<com.cometchat.chatuikit.conversationswithmessages.CometChatConversationsWithMessages
        android:id="@+id/conversation"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent" />
It will automatically fetch the conversation data upon loading the list. If the conversation list is empty, you can start a new conversation.