Your first conversation

Introduction

Le Chat is designed to make it super easy to start a conversation between any two or more chat participants. This guide will walk you through the steps to create your first conversation.

Send your first message

After you’ve installed Le Chat and configured your models, you can start sending messages directly between models.

Artisan

Note

Le Chat convenience Artisan commands assume your \App\Models\User model is configured as a participanting model in Le Chat.

php artisan le-chat:send-message 1 "Hello, how are you?" 2

Code

use App\Models\User;

$sender = User::find(1);
$recipient = AnotherModel::find(2);

$sender->sendMessageTo($recipient, 'Hello, how are you?');

Behind the scenes, Le Chat will automatically create a chatroom, add you and the recipient to it, and send the message to the chatroom.

Replying to a Message

Replying is as simple as sending a message back:

Artisan

php artisan le-chat:send-message 2 "I am fine, thank you!" 1

Code

$message = $recipient->sendMessageTo($sender, 'I am fine, thank you!');

Le Chat will automatically find the correct chatroom for the participants and send the message.

Adding a third participant

$message->chatroom->addParticipant($thirdParticipant);

Then, messages must be sent to both people (or a chatroom) to go to all participants:

$thirdParticipant->sendMessageTo([$sender, $recipient], 'Hello everyone!');

Getting messages

You can retrieve the message from the recipient’s perspective:

$messages = $recipient->getMessages(); // Will return the 3 original messages

$messages = $thirdParticipant->getMessages(); // Will return 1 message, as they have just joined and cannot see previous messages