Official Flutter SDK for Stream Chat

The official Flutter components for Stream Chat, a service for building chat applications.

Quick Links

Register to get an API key for Stream Chat
Flutter Chat Tutorial
Chat UI Kit
UI Docs
Chat Client Docs

V4 Migration Guide

For upgrading from V3 to V4, please refer to the V4 Migration Guide

Changelog

Check out the changelog on pub.dev to see the latest changes in the package.

Flutter Chat Tutorial

The best place to start is the Flutter Chat Tutorial. It teaches you how to use this SDK and also shows how to make frequently required changes.

Example App

This repo includes a fully functional example app with setup instructions. The example is available under the example folder.

Add dependency

Add this to your package's pubspec.yaml file, use the latest version

dependencies:
 stream_chat_flutter: ^latest_version

You should then run flutter packages get

Android

The package uses photo_manager to access the device's photo library. Follow this wiki to fulfil the Android requirements.

iOS

The library uses flutter file picker plugin to pick files from the os. Follow this wiki to fulfill iOS requirements.

We also use video_player to reproduce videos. Follow this guide to fulfill the requirements.

To pick images from the camera, we use the image_picker plugin. Follow these instructions to check the requirements.

Troubleshooting

It may happen that you have some problems building the app. If it seems related to the flutter file picker plugin make sure to check this page

Docs

This package provides UI components required for integrating Stream Chat into your application. Alternatively, you may use the core package stream_chat_flutter_core which allows more customisation and provides business logic but no UI components. If you require the maximum amount of control over the API, please use the low level client package: stream_chat.

UI Components

These are the available Widgets that you can use to build your application UI. Every widget uses the StreamChat or StreamChannel widgets to manage the state and communicate with Stream services.

Customizing styles

The Flutter SDK comes with a fully designed set of widgets that you can customize to fit with your application style and typography. Changing the theme of Chat widgets works in a very similar way that MaterialApp and Theme do.

Out of the box, all chat widgets use their default styling, and there are two ways to change the styling:

Initialize the StreamChatTheme from your existing MaterialApp style

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  final StreamChatClient client;

  MyApp(this.client);

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    final theme = ThemeData(
      primarySwatch: Colors.green,
    );

    return MaterialApp(
      theme: theme,
      builder: (context, child) => StreamChat(
       child: child,
       client: client,
       streamChatThemeData: StreamChatThemeData.fromTheme(theme),
      ),
      home: ChannelListPage(),
      );
  }
}

Construct a custom theme and provide all the customizations needed

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  final StreamChatClient client;

  MyApp(this.client);

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    final theme = ThemeData(
      primarySwatch: Colors.green,
    );

    return MaterialApp(
      theme: theme,
      builder: (context, child) => StreamChat(
       child: child,
       client: client,
       streamChatThemeData: StreamChatThemeData.fromTheme(theme).copyWith(
          ownMessageTheme: MessageTheme(
          messageBackgroundColor: Colors.black,
          messageText: TextStyle(
            color: Colors.white,
          ),
          avatarTheme: AvatarTheme(
            borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(8),
          ),
          ),
       ),
      ),
      home: ChannelListPage(),
      );
  }
}

Offline storage

To add data persistance you can extend the class ChatPersistenceClient and pass an instance to the StreamChatClient.

class CustomChatPersistentClient extends ChatPersistenceClient {
...
}

final client = StreamChatClient(
  apiKey ?? kDefaultStreamApiKey,
  logLevel: Level.INFO,
)..chatPersistenceClient = CustomChatPersistentClient();

We provide an official persistent client in the (stream_chat_persistence)https://pub.dev/packages/stream_chat_persistence package.

import 'package:stream_chat_persistence/stream_chat_persistence.dart';

final chatPersistentClient = StreamChatPersistenceClient(
  logLevel: Level.INFO,
  connectionMode: ConnectionMode.background,
);

final client = StreamChatClient(
  apiKey ?? kDefaultStreamApiKey,
  logLevel: Level.INFO,
)..chatPersistenceClient = chatPersistentClient;

Contributing

We welcome code changes that improve this library or fix a problem, please make sure to follow all best practices and add tests if applicable before submitting a Pull Request on Github. We are pleased to merge your code into the official repository. Make sure to sign our Contributor License Agreement (CLA) first. See our license file for more details.