Message History

Message history lets you keep a history of changes to messages. These only include the changes to the following fields:

Text
Attachments
Any custom field
Whether the message is soft deleted

The value of the fields before the update, will be stored in the message history. Since the present state is already available and otherwise some information will be lost.

The time when the change was made ( message_updated_at ) and the user who made the change ( message_updated_by_id ) will also be stored.

This feature is only available on Stream’s Enterprise pricing plans. Request the Stream team to enable this feature for your app by contacting support.

Example

Let’s assume we have a channel with users alice and bob. We have the user admin with the admin role as well.

alice sends a message:

const message = await channel.sendMessage({
  id: "message-1",
  text: "Hello bob! give me a call.",
});

Note that sending a new message won’t create a history record.

alice notices she didn’t include her number. So she edits the message to include it:

await client.updateMessage({
  id: "message-1",
  text: "Hello bob! give me a call. Here is my number: +31 6 12345678",
});

This step will be recorded in the message history.

admin notices the message and since sending numbers is not allowed, he/she edits the message to remove the number:

await adminClient.updateMessage({
  id: "message-1",
  text: "Hello bob! give me a call. Here is my number: [removed]",
});

This step will also be recorded in the message history.

Now customer support takes a look at message history by calling the server-side only API:

const history = await serverClient.queryMessageHistory({
  message_id: "message-1",
});

There will be two histories:

[
 {
   "message_id": "message-1",
   "text": "Hello bob! give me a call. Here is my number: +31 6 12345678",
   "message_updated_by_id": "admin",
   "message_updated_at" "2024-04-24T15:50:21"
 },
 {
   "message_id": "message-1",
   "text": "Hello bob! give me a call.",
   "message_updated_by_id": "alice",
   "message_updated_at" "2024-04-24T15:47:46"
 }
]

By default, you get the history sorted by latest first.

Querying message history

It is possible to filter and sort when querying message history. Note that this is a server-side only API.

Name	type	Description	Supported operations	Example
message_id	string or list of strings	the ID of the message	$in, $eq	{ message_id: { $in: [ ‘message-1’, ‘message-2’ ] } }
message_updated_by_id	string or list of strings	the ID of the user who made updates to messages	$in, $eq	{ message_updated_by_id: { $in: [ ‘alice’, ‘bob’ ] } }
message_updated_at	string, must be formatted as a RFC3339 timestamp	the time the update was made	$eq, $gt, $lt, $gte, $lte	{ message_updated_at: {$gte: ‘2024-04-24T15:50:00.00Z’ }

Example query:

// sorted by `message_updated_at` ascending:
const history = await client.queryMessageHistory(
  { message_id: "message-1" },
  { message_updated_at: 1 },
);

Response:

[
  {
    "message_id": "message-1",
    "text": "Hello bob! give me a call.",
    "is_deleted": false
    "message_updated_by_id": "alice",
    "message_updated_at" "2024-04-24T15:47:46"
  },
  {
    "message_id": "message-1",
    "text": "Hello bob! give me a call. Here is my number: +31 6 12345678",
    "is_deleted": false,
    "message_updated_by_id": "admin",
    "message_updated_at" "2024-04-24T15:50:21"
  }
]

Polls API

Moderation Tools