Custom attachments

The Stream API allows you to add any attachment to a message. The SDK supports some common types (such as images, videos, etc.) out-of-the-box, but you have to provide your own template to display others.

The Angular SDK has out-of-the-box support for the following types:

Images (including GIFs) are displayed inline
Videos are displayed inline
Voice recordings are displayed inline
Other files can be downloaded
Links in a message are enriched with built-in open graph URL scraping

Example 1 - different type of attachments:

Example 2 - voice recording:

This guide will show you how to create custom attachments. In the example, we’ll allow users to make payment links to send money to each other, but the same logic works for any attachment.

Creating the attachment

Let’s add a button to the message input component to make a payment link. How we create the attachment doesn’t matter; the important part is to create an Attachment object we can provide to the AttachmentService.

<!-- Each message input component has it's own instance of the AttachmentService -->
<stream-message-input #input>
  <button
    message-input-start
    (click)="createPaymentLink(input.attachmentService)"
  >
    Payment link
  </button>
</stream-message-input>

// Optionally, you can define the shape of your custom attachments to get proper compile checks
type MyGenerics = DefaultStreamChatGenerics & {
  attachmentType: {
    type: 'custom';
    subtype: 'payment';
    value: string;
    paymentLink: string;
  };
};

createPaymentLink(attachmentService: AttachmentService) {
  const attachment: Attachment<MyGenerics> = {
      type: 'custom',
      subtype: 'payment',
      value: `${Math.ceil(Math.random() * 99)}$`,
      paymentLink: 'pay/me/or/else',
  };
  // Insert the attachment to the list of custom attachments
  attachmentService.customAttachments$.next([
      ...attachmentService.customAttachments$.value,
      attachment,
  ]);
}

Message input with custom payment link button

Clicking the “Payment link” will add the attachment to the message, but we don’t yet have any visual indicator of this.

Custom attachment preview

Let’s add a preview of the payment attachment.

To do this, we define the HTML template code for the preview that uses the AttachmentService to display the previews of the custom attachments:

<ng-template #customAttachmentPreviews let-service="service">
  <div
    style="padding: 8px; background-color: azure; border-radius: inherit"
    class="custom-attachment-container"
    *ngFor="let attachment of service.customAttachments$ | async"
  >
    <ng-container [ngSwitch]="attachment.subtype">
      <div *ngSwitchCase="'payment'" class="payment-link">
        🤑 {{ attachment.value }}
      </div>
    </ng-container>
  </div>
</ng-template>

Note: if you’re using standalone components, you need to import the CommonModule into your component.

If you have multiple different types of custom attachments, you can display them all here.

Next, we register the template for the customAttachmentPreviewListTemplate$ field of the CustomTemplatesService:

export class AppComponent implements AfterViewInit {
  @ViewChild("customAttachmentPreviews")
  customAttachmentPreviewsTemplate!: TemplateRef<CustomAttachmentPreviewListContext>;

  constructor(private customTemplatesService: CustomTemplatesService) {}

  ngAfterViewInit(): void {
    this.customTemplatesService.customAttachmentPreviewListTemplate$.next(
      this.customAttachmentPreviewsTemplate
    );
  }
}

If we click the “Payment link” button, the preview is now visible:

Delete attachment preview

Let’s allow deleting a payment link by extending the template of the preview:

<ng-template #customAttachmentPreviews let-service="service">
  <div
    style="padding: 8px; background-color: azure; border-radius: inherit"
    class="custom-attachment-container"
    *ngFor="let attachment of service.customAttachments$ | async"
  >
    <ng-container [ngSwitch]="attachment.subtype">
      <div *ngSwitchCase="'payment'" class="payment-link">
        🤑 {{ attachment.value }}
        <!-- Add a delete button -->
        <button (click)="deletePaymentLink(attachment, service)">X</button>
      </div>
    </ng-container>
  </div>
</ng-template>

This is the implementation of the delete payment attachment method:

deletePaymentLink(
  attachment: Attachment<MyGenerics>,
  attachmentService: AttachmentService<MyGenerics>
) {
  attachmentService.customAttachments$.next(
    attachmentService.customAttachments$.value.filter(
      (a) => a.paymentLink !== attachment.paymentLink
    )
  );
}

Loading state

Sometimes, creating attachments happens asynchronously. If that’s the case, you should disable message sending while the attachment is processing.

Here is how you can do that by extending the createPaymentLink method:

async createPaymentLink(attachmentService: AttachmentService) {
    // Increment the upload counter to disable message send
    attachmentService.attachmentUploadInProgressCounter$.next(
      attachmentService.attachmentUploadInProgressCounter$.value + 1
    );
    const attachment: Attachment<MyGenerics> = {
      type: 'custom',
      subtype: 'payment',
      value: `${Math.ceil(Math.random() * 99)}$`,
      paymentLink: '',
    };
    // simulate network call
    await new Promise<void>((resolve) => {
      setTimeout(() => {
        attachment.paymentLink = 'pay/me/or/else';
        resolve();
      }, 2000);
    });
    attachmentService.customAttachments$.next([
      ...attachmentService.customAttachments$.value,
      attachment,
    ]);
    // Attachment is ready, decrease the upload counter
    attachmentService.attachmentUploadInProgressCounter$.next(
      attachmentService.attachmentUploadInProgressCounter$.value - 1
    );
  }

Custom attachment inside the message list

The last missing step is to display the payment link inside the message list. This will be very similar to how we created the attachment preview.

First, let’s define an HTML template:

<ng-template #customAttachments let-attachments="attachments">
  <div
    class="custom-attachment-container"
    *ngFor="let attachment of attachments"
  >
    <ng-container [ngSwitch]="attachment.subtype">
      <div
        style="margin-inline: 16px; margin-top: 8px"
        *ngSwitchCase="'payment'"
        class="payment-link"
      >
        💵
        <a [href]="attachment.link" target="_blank">{{ attachment.value }}</a>
      </div>
    </ng-container>
  </div>
</ng-template>

The attachments template variable will contain the list of custom attachments.

By default the SDK will treat all image, file, giphy, video and voiceRecording attachments as built-in. All other type of attachments are treated as custom attachments.

If you want to change the filtering logic, provide your own implementation using the filterCustomAttachment method of the MessageService.

Next, we register the template for the customAttachmentListTemplate$ field of the CustomTemplatesService:

export class AppComponent implements AfterViewInit {
  @ViewChild("customAttachments")
  customAttachmentsTemplate!: TemplateRef<CustomAttachmentListContext>;

  constructor(private customTemplatesService: CustomTemplatesService) {}

  ngAfterViewInit(): void {
    this.customTemplatesService.customAttachmentListTemplate$.next(
      this.customAttachmentsTemplate
    );
  }
}

This is how the attachment looks like inside the message list:

If you need reference to the message ID (and parent message ID for thread replies) the attachments belong to, this is how you can access them:

<ng-template
  #customAttachments
  let-attachments="attachments"
  let-messageId="messageId"
  let-parentMessageId="parentMessageId"
>
  <div *ngFor="let attachment of attachments">
    {{ messageId }} {{ parentMessageId }} {{ attachment | json }}
  </div>
</ng-template>

Emoji picker

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