This is documentation for Stream Chat React SDK v11, which is no longer actively maintained. For up-to-date documentation, see the latest version (v12).

Geolocation Attachment

In this comprehensive example, we demonstrate how to build a location sharing feature. Chat users will have the ability to send their location to a channel through a custom Attachment component that displays coordinates using the Google Maps API.

The feature flow has three distinct steps:

Select Share Location custom message action
Confirm you wish to send your location to the current channel
Render coordinates on a Google Maps overlay sent as a message attachment

Custom Message Action

The first step in our location sharing flow is to add a custom message action that on click allows a chat user to begin the process of sending their coordinates to the channel. For a more detailed explanation of customizing message actions, see our custom code example.

In this example, our custom handler function will toggle a state variable that shows/hides a location sharing confirmation modal.

const [shareLocation, setShareLocation] = useState<boolean>(false);

const locationHandler = (message: StreamMessage, event: React.BaseSyntheticEvent) => {
  setShareLocation(true);
};

const customMessageActions = { 'Share Location': locationHandler };

<MessageList customMessageActions={customMessageActions} />;

Next, we display a popup that prompts the chat user to confirm whether or not they actually wish to send their location to the current channel.

As soon as the modal component mounts, we fetch the connected user’s latitude and longitude by calling the getCurrentPosition method from the Geolocation Web API. The coordinates are then set into local state hooks. If the user confirms they wish to share their location, a message attachment of type map is created with the latitude and longitude state variables attached.

type ShareLocationModalProps = {
  setShareLocation: React.Dispatch<React.SetStateAction<boolean>>;
};

const ShareLocationModal: React.FC<ShareLocationModalProps> = (props) => {
  const { setShareLocation } = props;
  const { sendMessage } = useChannelActionContext();

  const [latitude, setLatitude] = useState<number>();
  const [longitude, setLongitude] = useState<number>();

  useEffect(() => {
    navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition((position) => {
      setLatitude(position.coords.latitude);
      setLongitude(position.coords.longitude);
    });
  }, []);

  const handleYes = async () => {
    const messageToSend: MessageToSend = {
      attachments: [{ type: 'map', latitude, longitude }],
    };

    try {
      await sendMessage(messageToSend);
    } catch (err) {
      console.log(err);
    }

    setShareLocation(false);
  };

  const handleNo = () => setShareLocation(false);

  return (
    <div className='share-location'>
      <div>Do you want to share your location in this conversation?</div>
      <div className='share-location-buttons'>
        <button disabled={!latitude || !longitude} onClick={handleYes}>
          Yes
        </button>
        <button onClick={handleNo}>No</button>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

Custom Map Attachment

Now that we’ve created a message attachment of type map, we need to build a custom Attachment component that conditionally renders this new type. If a message attachment is not of type map, meaning it’s a standard library type, we return the default Attachment component.

When our custom component receives an attachment of type map, we pass the geolocation coordinates into the GoogleMapReact component. This library is a React-based wrapper around the Google Maps API and displays a map and geolocation as a React component. See the google-map-react readme and documentation for more information.

Since the GoogleMapReact component can take some time to render as coordinates are extracted from the Geolocation API, we render the component library’s standard LoadingIndicator while we wait for latitude and longitude to be set.

In order to interact with the Google Maps API, you must set up an account and generate an API key.

Since we’ve added new fields to our map type message attachment, we must extend the basic Attachment type (renamed to StreamAttachment here) to support latitude and longitude.

import GoogleMapReact from 'google-map-react';

const googleMapsApiKey = process.env.REACT_APP_GOOGLE_MAPS as string;

type MapCenterProps = {
  lat: number;
  lng: number;
};

const MapCenter: React.FC<MapCenterProps> = () => <div className='map-center' />;

type ExtendedAttachment = {
  latitude?: number;
  longitude?: number;
};

type MapAttachmentProps<ExtendedAttachment> = {
  mapAttachment: StreamAttachment<ExtendedAttachment>;
};

const MapAttachment: React.FC<MapAttachmentProps<ExtendedAttachment>> = (props) => {
  const { mapAttachment } = props;

  const { latitude, longitude } = mapAttachment;

  if (!latitude || !longitude) {
    return (
      <div className='map-loading'>
        <LoadingIndicator size={30} />
      </div>
    );
  }

  const center = {
    lat: latitude,
    lng: longitude,
  };

  return (
    <GoogleMapReact
      bootstrapURLKeys={{ key: googleMapsApiKey }}
      defaultCenter={center}
      defaultZoom={11}
      style={{ height: '250px', width: '250px' }}
      yesIWantToUseGoogleMapApiInternals
    >
      <MapCenter lat={center.lat} lng={center.lng} />
    </GoogleMapReact>
  );
};

const CustomAttachment: React.FC<AttachmentProps> = (props) => {
  const { attachments } = props;

  if (attachments[0]?.type === 'map') {
    return <MapAttachment mapAttachment={attachments[0]} />;
  }

  return <Attachment {...props} />;
};

Implementation

Now that each individual piece has been constructed, we can assemble all of the snippets into the final code example.

The Code

.map-loading {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
  background: var(--grey-whisper);
  border-radius: 16px;
  height: 250px;
  width: 250px;
}

.map-center {
  background: var(--primary-color);
  border-radius: 6px;
  height: 12px;
  width: 12px;
}

.share-location {
  position: absolute;
  top: 50%;
  left: 50%;
  background: var(--white-snow);
  border: 2px solid var(--primary-color);
  border-radius: 8px;
  padding: 8px;
  z-index: 99;
}

.share-location-buttons {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: space-evenly;
  margin-bottom: 8px;
  margin-top: 16px;
}

.share-location-buttons button {
  border-radius: 16px;
  font-size: 16px;
  width: 80px;
}

import GoogleMapReact from 'google-map-react';

const googleMapsApiKey = process.env.REACT_APP_GOOGLE_MAPS as string;

type ShareLocationModalProps = {
  setShareLocation: React.Dispatch<React.SetStateAction<boolean>>;
};

const ShareLocationModal: React.FC<ShareLocationModalProps> = (props) => {
  const { setShareLocation } = props;
  const { sendMessage } = useChannelActionContext();

  const [latitude, setLatitude] = useState<number>();
  const [longitude, setLongitude] = useState<number>();

  useEffect(() => {
    navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition((position) => {
      setLatitude(position.coords.latitude);
      setLongitude(position.coords.longitude);
    });
  }, []);

  const handleYes = async () => {
    const messageToSend: MessageToSend = {
      attachments: [{ type: 'map', latitude, longitude }],
    };

    try {
      await sendMessage(messageToSend);
    } catch (err) {
      console.log(err);
    }

    setShareLocation(false);
  };

  const handleNo = () => setShareLocation(false);

  return (
    <div className='share-location'>
      <div>Do you want to share your location in this conversation?</div>
      <div className='share-location-buttons'>
        <button disabled={!latitude || !longitude} onClick={handleYes}>
          Yes
        </button>
        <button onClick={handleNo}>No</button>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

type MapCenterProps = {
  lat: number;
  lng: number;
};

const MapCenter: React.FC<MapCenterProps> = () => <div className='map-center' />;

type ExtendedAttachment = {
  latitude?: number;
  longitude?: number;
};

type MapAttachmentProps<ExtendedAttachment> = {
  mapAttachment: StreamAttachment<ExtendedAttachment>;
};

const MapAttachment: React.FC<MapAttachmentProps<ExtendedAttachment>> = (props) => {
  const { mapAttachment } = props;

  const { latitude, longitude } = mapAttachment;

  if (!latitude || !longitude) {
    return (
      <div className='map-loading'>
        <LoadingIndicator size={30} />
      </div>
    );
  }

  const center = {
    lat: latitude,
    lng: longitude,
  };

  return (
    <GoogleMapReact
      bootstrapURLKeys={{ key: googleMapsApiKey }}
      defaultCenter={center}
      defaultZoom={11}
      style={{ height: '250px', width: '250px' }}
      yesIWantToUseGoogleMapApiInternals
    >
      <MapCenter lat={center.lat} lng={center.lng} />
    </GoogleMapReact>
  );
};

const CustomAttachment: React.FC<AttachmentProps> = (props) => {
  const { attachments } = props;

  if (attachments[0]?.type === 'map') {
    return <MapAttachment mapAttachment={attachments[0]} />;
  }

  return <Attachment {...props} />;
};

const App = () => {
  const [shareLocation, setShareLocation] = useState<boolean>(false);

  const locationHandler = (message: StreamMessage, event: React.BaseSyntheticEvent) => {
    setShareLocation(true);
  };

  const customMessageActions = { 'Share Location': locationHandler };

  return (
    <Chat client={chatClient}>
      <ChannelList />
      <Channel Attachment={CustomAttachment}>
        <Window>
          {shareLocation && <ShareLocationModal setShareLocation={setShareLocation} />}
          <ChannelHeader />
          <MessageList customMessageActions={customMessageActions} />
          <MessageInput />
        </Window>
        <Thread />
      </Channel>
    </Chat>
  );
};

The Result

The MapAttachment component loading:

The MapAttachment component rendered:

Image Gallery

Giphy Preview

Geolocation Attachment

Custom Message Action

Location Sharing Confirmation

Custom Map Attachment

Implementation

The Code

The Result