Users and tokens

Connecting users

The client documentation details all important information about regular and authless users. Here is how you can connect these users in the Angular SDK:

// Connect by providing user id only
this.chatService.init("<API key>", "<user id>", "<token or provider>");

// Or connect by providing user settings such as name, image, etc.
this.chatService.init(
  "<API key>",
  {
    id: "<user id>",
    name: "Sara",
    image: "url/to/image",
  },
  "<token or provider>"
);

// Guest users
this.chatService.init(environment.apiKey, "john", "guest");

// Anonymous users
this.chatService.init(environment.apiKey, undefined, "anonymous");

Generating tokens

Regular users (all users except guests and anonymous users) require a valid JWT token to access the Stream API. Tokens can't be created securely on the client-side, so you should generate tokens on your server-side. All important information about tokens can be found in the client documentation.

Here is how you can provide the generated token to the Angular SDK:

// Option 1: using a static token
this.chatService.init(
  "<API key>",
  "<user or id>",
  // Example static token
  "eyJhbGcIOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9..."
);

// Option 2. using a token provider
this.chatService.init(
  "<API key>",
  "<user or id>",
  // Example token provider
  // The SDK will call your token provider when you connect, or when the token is expired and it needs a new one
  // With token providers you can use short-living tokens, so we advise using this method in your production applications
  () => async {
    const token = await (<HTTP call to your own backend to obtain a new token>).token;

    return token;
  }
);

This is how you can use developer tokens with the Angular SDK:

import { StreamChat } from "stream-chat";

const apiKey = "<API key>";
const userId = "<user id>";
const devToken = StreamChat.getInstance(apiKey).devToken(userId);
this.chatService.init(apiKey, userId, devToken);

Disconnecting users

If your application allows connecting with different users, you should make sure to properly disconnect the previous user before connecting a new one:

private async connectUser(userId: string) {
    // Make sure to wait for disconnect before connecting a new user
    await this.disconnectUser();
    await this.chatService.init('<API key>', userId, '<token provider>');
    this.channelService.init('<channel filters>');
}

private async disconnectUser() {
    if (!this.chatService.chatClient?.user) {
        return;
    }
    this.channelService.reset();
    await this.chatService.disconnectUser();
}

User object

You can subscribe to the user$ Observable to get all important information (such us online state, unread count, etc) about the current user:

this.chatService.user$.subscribe((u) => console.log(u));

If there is no connected user, it will emit undefined.