Channel Preview

The ChannelList prop Preview allows you to override the preview component which is rendered for each channel in the list (think of it as the UI of a ChannelList item). The component passed as the Preview will receive props from the ChannelList and the ChannelPreview wrapper (which extends these props with additional UI-specific items and renders it). Apart from the UI the Preview component is also responsible for channel selection (click handler).

The Preview property defaults to ChannelPreviewMessenger component if no custom component is provided.

Basic Usage

To customize the ChannelList item UI simply pass your custom Preview component to the ChannelList. See The Preview Prop Component for the extended guide.

const CustomChannelPreviewUI = ({ latestMessagePreview, lastMessage }) => {
  // "lastMessage" property is for the last
  // message that has been interacted with (pinned/edited/deleted)

  // to display last message of the channel use "latestMessagePreview" property
  return <span>{latestMessagePreview}</span>;
};

<ChannelList Preview={CustomChannelPreviewUI} />;

Props

channel

This required prop is the channel to be previewed; comes from either the channelRenderFilterFn or usePaginatedChannels call from ChannelList and does not need to be set manually.

active

If the component’s channel is the active (selected) channel.

activeChannel

The currently selected channel object.

Avatar

The custom UI component to display the avatar for the channel.

channelUpdateCount

A number that forces the update of the preview component on channel update.

className

Custom class for the channel preview root

displayImage

Image of channel to display.

displayTitle

Title of channel to display.

getLatestMessagePreview

Custom function that generates the message preview in ChannelPreview component.

lastMessage

The last message received in a channel.

latestMessage

Deprecated, use latestMessagePreview instead.

latestMessagePreview

Latest message preview to display. Will be either a string or a JSX.Element rendering markdown.

messageDeliveryStatus

Status describing whether own message has been delivered or read by another. If the last message is not an own message, then the status is undefined. The value is calculated from channel.read data on mount and updated on every message.new resp. message.read WS event.

Use MessageDeliveryStatus enum to determine the current delivery status, for example:

import type { MessageDeliveryStatus } from "stream-chat-react";
import { DoubleCheckMarkIcon, SingleCheckMarkIcon } from "../icons";

type MessageDeliveryStatusIndicator = {
  messageDeliveryStatus: MessageDeliveryStatus;
};

export const MessageDeliveryStatusIndicator = ({
  messageDeliveryStatus,
}: MessageDeliveryStatusIndicator) => {
  // the last message is not an own message in the channel
  if (!messageDeliveryStatus) return null;

  return (
    <div>
      {messageDeliveryStatus === MessageDeliveryStatus.DELIVERED && (
        <SingleCheckMarkIcon />
      )}
      {messageDeliveryStatus === MessageDeliveryStatus.READ && (
        <DoubleCheckMarkIcon />
      )}
    </div>
  );
};

onSelect

Custom handler invoked when the ChannelPreview is clicked. The SDK uses ChannelPreview to display items of channel search results. There, behind the scenes, the new active channel is set.

Preview

The UI component to use for display.

setActiveChannel

The setter function for a selected channel.

unread

The number of unread Messages.

watchers

The object containing watcher parameters. See the Pagination documentation for a list of available fields for sort.