easylivechat 0.1.43

Headless Flutter client for EasyLiveChat real-time customer support: sessions, messages, attachments, typing, presence and pre/post-chat forms over HTTP and Socket.IO. No UI.

easylivechat

Headless Dart client for EasyLiveChat real-time customer support. Sessions, messages, attachments, typing, presence and server-driven forms — exposed as plain ValueListenables, with no widgets, so you can build the chat UI your design system asks for.

Want the UI built for you? Use easylivechat_ui instead — a launcher bubble and full chat screen in a few lines. It re-exports this package, so you would not depend on both.

dependencies:
  easylivechat: ^0.1.42

or

flutter pub add easylivechat

Quick start

import 'package:easylivechat/easylivechat.dart';

Future<void> main() async {
  await EasyLiveChat.instance.boot(
    const EasyLiveChatConfig(
      apiBase: 'https://api.livechattools.com',
      tenantSlug: 'your-workspace',
    ),
    // See "Storage" below — the default is in-memory and NOT durable.
    storage: InMemoryStorage(),
  );

  // Optional: skip the pre-chat form for a user you already know.
  EasyLiveChat.instance.identify(name: 'Jane', email: '[e-mail]');

  // Start a new conversation, or resume the open one with its history.
  await EasyLiveChat.instance.open();

  EasyLiveChat.instance.messages.addListener(() {
    for (final m in EasyLiveChat.instance.messages.value) {
      print('${m.senderType}: ${m.body}');
    }
  });

  EasyLiveChat.instance.sendMessage('Hi there');
}

tenantSlug is your workspace slug — the one in your dashboard URL (your-workspace.livechattools.com). A runnable version, including binding every listenable, is in example/main.dart.

How it fits together

EasyLiveChat.instance is a singleton facade over a state machine. You drive it with a handful of methods and render from its listenables — it never calls into your UI.

boot()  →  open()  →  [prechat] → chat → feedback
                          ↑                  │
                          └── endChat() ─────┘

Listenable	Type	Use it for
phase	ChatPhase	Which screen to show
messages	List<ChatMessage>	The thread
agentTyping	bool	Typing indicator
unreadCount	int	Badge
connection	ConnectionState	"Reconnecting…"
widgetConfig	WidgetConfigModel?	Colours, copy, forms from the dashboard
isOpen / visitorMode	bool / String	Whether the workspace is taking chats

ChatPhase is idle, loading, resuming, prechat, chat, feedback, offline. ConnectionState is disconnected, connecting, connected, reconnecting.

Sending

final result = EasyLiveChat.instance.sendMessage('Hello');

Returns immediately with a SendResult. Its optimistic message is already in messages so you can render it at once; serverMessageId completes when the server confirms. A send that fails is marked failed rather than vanishing — resend(message) retries it.

Attachments are a two-step: upload, then send the returned URLs.

EasyLiveChat.instance.sendMessage('', attachmentUrls: [url]);

History

open() gives you the current visit. A returning customer's earlier visits sit behind a cursor rather than landing on screen — so ask, don't assume:

if (EasyLiveChat.instance.hasOlderHistory) {
  final page = await EasyLiveChat.instance.loadOlderMessages();
}

hasOlderHistory is the only reliable signal: a scoped first page cannot be told from a complete one by looking at what arrived.

Forms

Both forms are authored in the dashboard and arrive in widgetConfig.value — render preChatForm.fields yourself, then:

await EasyLiveChat.instance.startSession(fields: {'order_id': '123'});

After the chat ends, endChat() returns true when a post-chat survey should follow. Render postChatForm and submit:

await EasyLiveChat.instance.submitPostChat({'rating': '5'});

Field types, validation rules and localized labels are on the models, and validation mirrors the server's so you can pre-validate for UX.

Storage

boot() takes an EasyLiveChatStorage. It holds the visitor id and session token, which is what lets a returning visitor keep their identity and history.

The default InMemoryStorage is not durable — fine for tests, wrong for production, where every launch would create a stranger. Either use SecurePrefsStorage from easylivechat_ui, or implement the interface over your own store:

class MyStorage implements EasyLiveChatStorage {
  @override
  Future<String?> read(String key) async => /* ... */;
  @override
  Future<void> write(String key, String value) async => /* ... */;
  @override
  Future<void> delete(String key) async => /* ... */;
}

Tokens are credentials — put them somewhere encrypted, not plain preferences.

Errors

Failures surface on a stream rather than throwing out of the calls above, so a dropped network never crashes a build method:

EasyLiveChat.instance.onError.listen((e) => debugPrint('$e'));

Token expiry, reconnects and re-mints are handled internally.

System messages

Transfer and session notices arrive as messages with senderType == 'SYSTEM' carrying a structured metadata.i18n key instead of baked-in English, so you can render them in the visitor's language. Render the key if you have a translation, and fall back to body.

Localization

This package holds no user-facing strings — it is protocol and state only. locale tells the server which language to send your tenant's copy in; contentLocale picks the language for auto-greetings. Chrome strings live in easylivechat_ui.

Troubleshooting

"boot() must be called before use". Something touched EasyLiveChat.instance before boot() completed. Await it during startup.

The visitor is new on every launch. You are on InMemoryStorage — see Storage above.

Nothing arrives after a reconnect. The client re-joins and backfills on reconnect; if you also cache messages yourself, reconcile on message id and clientId rather than appending.

Config seems stale after a language switch. boot() is safe to call again with a new config — it adopts the change rather than ignoring it.

Server

Talks to an EasyLiveChat workspace. Create one at livechattools.com.