Getting started

This guide helps you add TalkJS to your Next.js app and create a chat between two users. It uses TalkJS's React Components for a highly customizable chat UI, alongside the JavaScript Data API for data manipulation tasks, such as synchronizing users and conversations.

The guide covers how to install TalkJS, view an existing conversation, create new users and conversations, customize the UI, and properly secure your chat.

Prerequisites

To make the most of this guide, you'll need:

A TalkJS account
A Next.js app to which you'd like to add TalkJS chat. If you don't have a Next.js app yet, you can use create-next-app to get started.

This guide uses TypeScript. If you're using plain JavaScript, use .jsx instead of .tsx.

Installation

To get started, install @talkjs/react-components and @talkjs/core:

SHELL


1npm install @talkjs/react-components @talkjs/core

View a conversation

To show a sample conversation, begin by setting up a Chat.tsx component.

Add components and default theme styles

First, import the TalkJS components and default theme's CSS.


1import { Chatbox } from '@talkjs/react-components';
2import '@talkjs/react-components/default.css';

TalkJS can only run in the browser, so use Next.js's Client Components to render the chat component on the client only. To do this, add 'use client'; to the top of the component file:


1'use client';
2
3import { Chatbox } from '@talkjs/react-components';
4import '@talkjs/react-components/default.css';

Add chatbox

Next, add the Chatbox to your Next.js component:


1function Chat() {
2  const appId = '<APP_ID>';
3
4  return (
5    <Chatbox
6      style={{ width: '400px', height: '600px' }}
7      appId={appId}
8      userId="sample_user_alice"
9      conversationId="sample_conversation"
10    />
11  );
12}
13
14export default Chat;

The Chatbox here takes the following props:

appId: Your TalkJS app ID. You can find your app ID on the Settings page of your TalkJS dashboard. For this guide, use the app ID for your test mode, which has built-in sample users and conversations.

userId: An identifier for the current user to send messages as. This example uses the ID of an existing sample user, sample_user_alice.
conversationId: An identifier of the conversation that you want to view. This example uses the ID for a built-in sample conversation, sample_conversation.

You can now use the Chat Next.js component anywhere in your app.

To view the chat, run your app:


1npm run dev

You should get something like the following:

Chatbox showing a message from Sebastian

You now have a fully featured chat window running in your app. Try sending a message!

To view the conversation as a different user, change the userId. For example, try switching the userId to sample_user_sebastian to view the other side of the sample conversation.

If the chat window doesn't show up, make sure that you've entered your app ID correctly.

Create new users and conversations

So far in this guide you've used a sample user and conversation. Next, create new users and a conversation between them, and sync them with the TalkJS servers. To do this, use the JavaScript Data API.

Import getTalkSession from the @talkjs/core package into your component, along with React's useEffect:


1import { Chatbox } from '@talkjs/react-components';
2import '@talkjs/react-components/default.css';
3import { getTalkSession } from '@talkjs/core';
4import { useEffect } from 'react';

Add the following code to your component:


1function Chat() {
2  const appId = '<APP_ID>';
3  const userId = 'frank';
4  const otherUserId = 'nina';
5  const conversationId = 'new_conversation';
6  const session = getTalkSession({ appId, userId });
7
8  useEffect(() => {
9    session.currentUser.createIfNotExists({ name: 'Frank' });
10    session.user(otherUserId).createIfNotExists({ name: 'Nina' });
11
12    const conversation = session.conversation(conversationId);
13    conversation.createIfNotExists();
14    conversation.participant(otherUserId).createIfNotExists();
15  }, [session, conversationId, otherUserId]);
16
17  return (
18    <Chatbox
19      style={{ width: '400px', height: '600px' }}
20      appId={appId}
21      userId={userId}
22      conversationId={conversationId}
23    />
24  );
25}

This code creates a new TalkJS session, which provides access to a continuous, up-to-date flow of your TalkJS data. It then creates two new users and a conversation between them.

Code example

Here's an example with the code so far, so that you can see how it all fits together. The following code adds TalkJS chat to a Chat.tsx Next.js component:


1'use client';
2
3import { Chatbox } from '@talkjs/react-components';
4import '@talkjs/react-components/default.css';
5import { getTalkSession } from '@talkjs/core';
6import { useEffect } from 'react';
7
8function Chat() {
9  const appId = '<APP_ID>';
10  const userId = 'frank';
11  const otherUserId = 'nina';
12  const conversationId = 'new_conversation';
13  const session = getTalkSession({ appId, userId });
14
15  useEffect(() => {
16    session.currentUser.createIfNotExists({ name: 'Frank' });
17    session.user(otherUserId).createIfNotExists({ name: 'Nina' });
18
19    const conversation = session.conversation(conversationId);
20    conversation.createIfNotExists();
21    conversation.participant(otherUserId).createIfNotExists();
22  }, [session, conversationId, otherUserId]);
23
24  return (
25    <Chatbox
26      style={{ width: '400px', height: '600px' }}
27      appId={appId}
28      userId={userId}
29      conversationId={conversationId}
30    />
31  );
32}
33
34export default Chat;

Customize TalkJS

The easiest way to customize a TalkJS component is by using the props and events that the component exposes. See each component’s reference documentation for a list of available props.

As an example if you want to hide the built-in chat header, because it doesn't work well with the rest of your UI, you'd render the chatbox like this:


1<Chatbox
2  appId={appId}
3  userId={userId}
4  conversationId={conversationId}
5  chatHeaderVisible={false}
6/>

If you need even more flexibility, TalkJS has an extensive theme system, which lets you adapt the styles, markup, and behavior of the entire chat UI. See the Customization guide for more details.

Add authentication

Once you're using TalkJS in production you'll need to enable authentication, so that only legitimate users can connect to your chat. You'll need a backend server that can generate tokens for your users to authenticate with. See the Authentication docs for more detail on how to set this up.

To pass the token to your chatbox, add the token prop:


1<Chatbox
2  appId={appId}
3  userId={userId}
4  conversationId={conversationId}
5  token={token}
6/>

You also need to pass the token to your session:


1const session = getTalkSession({ appId, userId, token });

The token is different each time you connect to TalkJS, so you'll need to call your backend to generate it.

Once you are happy that your chat is loading without errors when you provide a token, go the Settings page of your dashboard and enable the Authentication (identity verification) option in the Security settings section. When you enable authentication, only users with a valid token can connect to your chat.

Next steps

For more ways to customize your chat, see the Chatbox reference docs.