realm/rchat

RChat – A Chat app built with SwiftUI and Realm

RChat is a chat application. Members of a chat room share messages, photos, location, and presence information with each other. The initial version is an iOS (Swift & SwiftUI) app, but we will use the same data model and backend Realm application to build an Android version in the future.

Read about the Realm data architecture here and how the app was built here.

Building and running the app

1. If you don't already have one, create a MongoDB Atlas Cluster, keeping the default name of Cluster0.
2. Install the Realm CLI and create an API key pair.
3. Download the repo and install the Realm app:

git clone https://github.com/ClusterDB/RChat.git
cd RChat/RChat-Realm/RChat
realm-cli login --api-key <your new public key> --private-api-key <your new private key>
realm-cli import # Then answer prompts, naming the app RChat

4. From the Atlas UI, click on the Realm logo and you will see the RChat app. Open it and copy the App Id

5. (Optional) Use mongoimport to import the empty database from the dump folder to create database indexes
6. Open the iOS project

cd ../../RChat-iOS
open RChat.xcodeproj

7. Update RChatApp.swift with your Realm App Id and then build

The new-schema branch contains all of the iOS and backend Realm app code needed to add a new feature to tag chat message as high priority. This includes schema and code changes. You can find all of the steps to safely make such a schema change in a production app in Migrating Your iOS App's Synced Realm Schema in Production.

The V2-schema branch contains all of the iOS and backend Realm app code needed to make the ChatMessage.author field non-optional. You can find all of the steps to safely make such a schema change in a production app in Migrating Your iOS App's Synced Realm Schema in Production.

rchat's Issues

Tutorial?

Hi Andrew,

Is there a companion tutorial for this? Or just a basic setup on how to config server and build?

Suggestion

A Slack channel to discuss SwitUI Realm apps would be a great way for many developers to exchange knowledge, since there are so few tutorials on the web.

Realm CLI Deprecated

The realm cli is deprecated and has been rolled into the app services cli so this no longer seems to work.

Blank screen on registering a new user but okay on first Login

@am-MongoDB
Thank you for such a helpful walk around Realm and SwiftUI
I am trying out your chat app - flex sync version
Am experiencing a blank screen when registering a new user , but when the user logs in again the ConversationList View is shown.
Any help on this?
Thanks

ios 14 issue for newest commit

Hi @am-MongoDB

In our application, we would like to use all the new features of the latest SDK release as used in the current commit, but support ios 14. The branch pre-ios15 seems to not have quite a lot of updates which could be useful in ios14 as well, that were made only on the main branch. Most issues with the current commit in main (which has target ios 15) are small and easy to fix, such as @FocusState and other small things. However, I am not sure how to properly make the following snippet ios 14 compatible (await is not available in ios 14 for some reason):

(Ideally, I would not want to switch to the publishers in AppState.swift if that's possible, since that code is much larger and will need many adjustments in various places. Is there a way around that, just by using an alternative to await?)

Task {
    if newUser {
        do {
            try await app.emailPasswordAuth.registerUser(email: email, password: password)
        } catch {
            DispatchQueue.main.async {
                state.error = error.localizedDescription
                state.shouldIndicateActivity = false
            }
            return
        }
    }
    do {
        let user = try await app.login(credentials: .emailPassword(email: email, password: password))
        userID = user.id
        state.shouldIndicateActivity = false
    } catch {
        DispatchQueue.main.async {
            state.error = error.localizedDescription
            state.shouldIndicateActivity = false
        }
    }
}

Persist user logged in if the app restarts

First, thanks for the sample app and its tutorial.

I am trying to understand which would be the best way to persist the logged in user in between app restarts. Right now, the user needs to log in again if the app or the phone restarts. That feels odd and it is not a standard or expected behaviour.

ClusterDB/task-tracker-swiftui suffers from the same challenge.

I haven't found any documentation, even though it should be ok as app.currentUser already maintains the identity and access token of the logged user.

Any guidance would be highly appreciated. Many thanks!

Unable to build due to LoginView.swift

Hello,

I followed the instructions on the readme and I'm running into a build issue.

RChat/RChat-iOS/RChat/Views/User Accounts & Profile/LoginView.swift

Lines 78 to 80 in 0b12b06

	let user = try await app.login(credentials: .emailPassword(email: email, password: password))
	userID = user.id
	state.shouldIndicateActivity = false

Is causing a an error that fails the build
Value of type 'Future<User, Error>' (aka 'Future<RLMUser, Error>') has no member 'id'

I've tried and failed to fix it. Any ideas? I'm new to swift and realm so I'm thinking it might just be a config issue on my end, but I can't find anything.

It also produces a warning:
No calls to throwing functions occur within 'try' expression
But I know this is how the Realm Documentation says to utilize the async login so I'm assuming this is fine.

slow loading times when accessing bigger chats

After playing around with the snapshot linked in the older version of the article and the newest version we noticed that the performance with "bigger" chats (already starting at about 20 messages) is a lot worse with the current version. When clicking on a chat to open the view freezes. The more messages, the longer until it then slides to the actual conversation view (already a few full seconds for more than 20 messages). There are also other things where the app laggs for some time, such as when adding people to chats or just navigating the app. Looking at the console output, that mostly occurs when there is a Disconnection and Reconnection for no apparent reason:

2022-02-27 18:23:00.413438+0100 RChat[10194:2895762] Sync: Connection[3]: Disconnected
2022-02-27 18:23:01.012754+0100 RChat[10194:2895762] Sync: Connection[4]: Session[4]: client_reset_config = false, Realm exists = true, client reset = false
2022-02-27 18:23:01.039700+0100 RChat[10194:2895762] Sync: Connected to endpoint 'xxxxx:443' (from 'xxxxx:49665')

With the linked commit the loading time was almost instant.

Could this be due to the new way of passing the .environment(...)?

.environment(\.realmConfiguration, app.currentUser!.configuration(partitionValue: "all-users=all-the-users"))

Thanks for Your help!

Chat integration with task app

Hi @am-MongoDB,

I am trying to integrate the chat app with the real task app, so that each task can have a group discussion (like in Asana or Trello).
Could you give an insight on how the overall model would look like to make both work together?

Cheers
Alex

Unable to save data after login

Hello Andrew

I enabled sync in Realm, and applied the permissions stated in the accompanying article. I am able to login and the user created, however when I attempt to save an update to the profile the data does not get stored. Would you have some suggestions what I set up incorrectly?

Thank you,
Andrew

Query: Adding a default conversation

I want to be able to add each user to a "default" conversation such that every user starts with at least one conversation (with no team members). Sounds crazy but I want to go and build out further but need to grasp the basics first!

I have literally spent HOURS trying lots of different options. Please help before I go completely crazy! My latest attempt being as follows:

// Open the default realm
let realm = try! Realm()

    try! realm.write {
        let conversation = Conversation()
        conversation.displayName = "My Conversation"
        conversation.unreadCount = 0
    
        var user = app.currentUser
        let userID = user.id
        
        let thisUser = User(_id: userID)
        realm.add(user)
    }

The flex-sync branch has no podfile to install

Rchat-iOS folder has no podfile for the step below to work
https://www.mongodb.com/developer/products/realm/realm-flex-sync-tutorial/

cd ../../RChat-iOS
pod install
open RChat.xcodeproj