Creating Channels Backend

Both channel channel.query and channel.watch methods ensure that a channel exists and create one otherwise. If all you need is to ensure that a channel exists, you can use channel.create. Typically you use channel.watch client side and channel.create for a server side integration. Channels are unique either by the specified channel id or by the list of members.

This is typically the best approach if you already have some sort of object in your database that the channel is associated with. As an example if you're building a livestreaming service like Twitch you have a channel for every streamer in your db.

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await channel = client.channel('messaging', 'travel', { 
    name: 'Awesome channel about traveling', 
    created_by_id: 'myuserid' 
}); 
await channel.create();

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conversation.create('jlahey')

Channels can be used to conversations between users. In most cases, you want conversations to be unique and make sure that a group of users have only a channel.

You can achieve this by leaving the channel ID empty and provide channel type and members. When you do so, the API will ensure that only one channel for the members you specified exists (the order of the members does not matter).

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const channel = client.channel('messaging', { 
    members: ['thierry', 'tommaso'], 
    created_by_id: 'myuserid' 
}); 
await channel.create();

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$conversation = $client->Channel('messaging', 'thierry-jenny', ['members'=>['thierry', 'jenny']]); 
$state   = $conversation->create('thierry');

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conversation = client.channel( 
    'messaging', 'thierry-tommaso-1',  
    data: { 
      'name'   => 'Founder Chat', 
      'image'  => 'http://bit.ly/2O35mws', 
      'members => ['thierry', 'tommaso'], 
    } 
)

When you create a channel using one of the above approaches you'll specify the following fields:

The channel data can contain as many custom fields as you'd like as long as the total size is below 5KB. Note that you typically upload images to a CDN. So the 5KB limit only applies to the text data specified on the channel. Members is a reserved field, and our UI libraries use name and image to display the channels.