stream_chat 10.0.1

The official Dart client for Stream Chat, a service for building chat applications.

Official Low-Level Dart Client for Stream Chat

The official low-level Dart client for Stream Chat, a service for building chat applications. This library can be used on any Dart project and on both mobile and web apps with Flutter.

Quick Links

• Register to get an API key for Stream Chat
• Flutter Chat Tutorial
• Documentation
• V10 Migration Guide

Changelog

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

Overview

stream_chat is the low-level client (LLC) of the Stream Chat Flutter SDK. It wraps the Stream Chat API and gives you the most control over UI, data, and architecture — at the cost of more plumbing. If you want built-in Flutter widgets, see stream_chat_flutter. If you want controllers and business logic without UI, see stream_chat_flutter_core.

Note: This is a front-end client SDK intended for use in Dart/Flutter applications. There are no plans to provide a backend (server-side) Dart SDK — backend integrations should use the Stream server-side SDKs available for Node.js, Python, Go, and other platforms.

Getting Started

Add dependency

Add this to your pubspec.yaml, using the latest version :

dependencies:
  stream_chat: ^10.0.0

Then run:

dart pub get

Example Project

There is a detailed example project in the example folder. You can run it directly to explore the API.

Setup API Client

First, instantiate a chat client. The client manages API calls, event handling, and the WebSocket connection to Stream Chat servers. You should create it once and re-use it across your application.

final client = StreamChatClient('stream-chat-api-key');

Logging

By default, the chat client writes all messages with level Warn or Error to stdout.

Change Logging Level

During development you might want to enable more logging information:

final client = StreamChatClient('stream-chat-api-key', logLevel: Level.INFO);

Custom Logger

You can handle log messages directly instead of writing them to stdout — useful for error tracking tools:

myLogHandlerFunction = (LogRecord record) {
  // do something with the record (e.g. send it to Sentry or Firebase Crashlytics)
};

final client = StreamChatClient(
  'stream-chat-api-key',
  logHandlerFunction: myLogHandlerFunction,
);

Offline Storage

To add data persistence, extend ChatPersistenceClient and pass an instance to StreamChatClient:

class CustomChatPersistentClient extends ChatPersistenceClient {
  // ...
}

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

We provide an official persistence client in the 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,
  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 where applicable before submitting a Pull Request on GitHub.

Code Conventions

• Make sure all public methods and functions are well documented.

Running Tests

dart test

Code Generation

JSON serialization relies on code generation. Keep it running while you make changes:

dart run build_runner watch