xmtp-react-native

This repo provides a package you can use to build with XMTP in a React Native or Expo app.

Is there a feature you need that's currently supported? Please open an issue.

Or better yet, open a PR and we'll get it reviewed and merged as soon as possible. If you contribute a PR that gets merged into this repo, you'll be eligible to claim this XMTP contributor POAP!

To learn more about XMTP and get answers to frequently asked questions, see XMTP documentation.

Reference docs

Access the xmtp-react-native client SDK reference documentation.

Example app

Use the XMTP React Native example app as a tool to start building an app with XMTP. This basic messaging app has an intentionally unopinionated UI to help make it easier for you to build with.

Follow the React Native guide to set up a CLI environment.

To use the example app, run:

cd example
npm install --force
npm run [ios or android]

Install in a managed Expo project

npx expo prebuild

Install in bare React Native project

For bare React Native projects, install and configure the expo package before continuing.

Add the package to your npm dependencies

npm i @xmtp/react-native-sdk

Configure for iOS

In the ios directory, update your Podfile file as follows:

• Set this value: platform :ios, '16.0'. This is required by XMTP.
• Add this line: pod 'secp256k1.swift', :modular_headers => true. This is required for web3.swift.

npm pod-install

Configure for Android

Your app must use Android minSdkVersion = 22 to work with the xmtp-react-native SDK.

Usage

The XMTP message API revolves around a network client that allows retrieving and sending messages to other network participants. A client must be connected to a wallet on startup. If this is the very first time the client is created, the client will generate a key bundle that is used to encrypt and authenticate messages. The key bundle persists encrypted in the network using a wallet signature. The public side of the key bundle is also regularly advertised on the network to allow parties to establish shared encryption keys. All this happens transparently, without requiring any additional code.

import { Client } from '@xmtp/xmtp-react-native'
import { ConnectWallet, useSigner } from "@thirdweb-dev/react-native";

// Create the client with your wallet. This will connect to the XMTP development network by default
const xmtp = await XMTP.Client.create(useSigner());
// Start a conversation with XMTP
const conversation = await xmtp.conversations.newConversation(
  '0x3F11b27F323b62B159D2642964fa27C46C841897'
)
// Load all messages in the conversation
const messages = await conversation.messages()
// Send a message
await conversation.send('gm')
// Listen for new messages in the conversation
for await (const message of await conversation.streamMessages()) {
  console.log(`[${message.senderAddress}]: ${message.content}`)
}

Currently, network nodes are configured to rate limit high-volume publishing from clients. A rate-limited client can expect to receive a 429 status code response from a node. Rate limits can change at any time in the interest of maintaining network health.

Use local storage

Important
If you are building a production-grade app, be sure to use an architecture that includes a local cache backed by an XMTP SDK.

To learn more, see Use local-first architecture.

Create a client

A client is created with Client.create(wallet: Signer): Promise<Client> that requires passing in a connected wallet that implements the Signer interface. The client will request a wallet signature in two cases:

1. To sign the newly generated key bundle. This happens only the very first time when key bundle is not found in storage.
2. To sign a random salt used to encrypt the key bundle in storage. This happens every time the client is started (including the very first time).

Important
The client connects to the XMTP dev environment by default. Use ClientOptions to change this and other parameters of the network connection.

import { Client } from '@xmtp/xmtp-react-native'
// Create the client with a `Signer` from your application
const xmtp = await Client.create(wallet)

Configure the client

The client's network connection and key storage method can be configured with these optional parameters of Client.create:

Parameter	Default	Description
appVersion	undefined	Add a client app version identifier that's included with API requests. For example, you can use the following format: appVersion: APP_NAME + '/' + APP_VERSION. Setting this value provides telemetry that shows which apps are using the XMTP client SDK. This information can help XMTP developers provide app support, especially around communicating important SDK updates, including deprecations and required upgrades.
env	dev	Connect to the specified XMTP network environment. Valid values include dev, production, or local. For important details about working with these environments, see XMTP production and dev network environments.

Handle conversations

Most of the time, when interacting with the network, you'll want to do it through conversations. Conversations are between two wallets.

import { Client } from '@xmtp/xmtp-react-native'
// Create the client with a `Signer` from your application
const xmtp = await Client.create(wallet)
const conversations = xmtp.conversations

List existing conversations

You can get a list of all conversations that have one or more messages.

const allConversations = await xmtp.conversations.list()
// Say gm to everyone you've been chatting with
for (const conversation of allConversations) {
  console.log(`Saying GM to ${conversation.peerAddress}`)
  await conversation.send('gm')
}

These conversations include all conversations for a user regardless of which app created the conversation. This functionality provides the concept of an interoperable inbox, which enables a user to access all of their conversations in any app built with XMTP.

Listen for new conversations

You can also listen for new conversations being started in real-time. This will allow applications to display incoming messages from new contacts.

Warning
This stream will continue infinitely. To end the stream you can call cancelStream().

const stream = await xmtp.conversations.stream()
for await (const conversation of stream) {
  console.log(`New conversation started with ${conversation.peerAddress}`)
  // Say hello to your new friend
  await conversation.send('Hi there!')
  // Break from the loop to stop listening
  break
}

Start a new conversation

You can create a new conversation with any Ethereum address on the XMTP network.

const newConversation = await xmtp.conversations.newConversation(
  '0x3F11b27F323b62B159D2642964fa27C46C841897'
)

Handle messages

To be able to send a message, the recipient must have already started their client at least once and consequently advertised their key bundle on the network. Messages are addressed using wallet addresses. The message payload can be a plain string, but other types of content can be supported through the use of SendOptions. See Handle different types of content for more details.

const conversation = await xmtp.conversations.newConversation(
  '0x3F11b27F323b62B159D2642964fa27C46C841897'
)
await conversation.send('Hello world')

List messages in a conversation

You can receive the complete message history in a conversation by calling conversation.messages()

for (const conversation of await xmtp.conversations.list()) {
  const messagesInConversation = await conversation.messages(before: new Date(new Date().setDate(new Date().getDate() - 1)), after: new Date())
}

List messages in a conversation with pagination

It may be helpful to retrieve and process the messages in a conversation page by page.

const conversation = await xmtp.conversations.newConversation(
  '0x3F11b27F323b62B159D2642964fa27C46C841897'
)

for await (const page of conversation.messages(limit: 25)) {
  for (const msg of page) {
    // Breaking from the outer loop will stop the client from requesting any further pages
    if (msg.content === 'gm') {
      return
    }
    console.log(msg.content)
  }
}

Listen for new messages in a conversation

You can listen for any new messages (incoming or outgoing) in a conversation by calling conversation.streamMessages().

A successfully received message (that makes it through the decoding and decryption without throwing) can be trusted to be authentic, i.e. that it was sent by the owner of the message.senderAddress wallet and that it wasn't modified in transit. The message.sent timestamp can be trusted to have been set by the sender.

The Stream returned by the stream methods is an asynchronous iterator and as such usable by a for-await-of loop. Note however that it is by its nature infinite, so any looping construct used with it will not terminate, unless the termination is explicitly initiated by calling cancelStreamMessages().

const conversation = await xmtp.conversations.newConversation(
  '0x3F11b27F323b62B159D2642964fa27C46C841897'
)
for await (const message of await conversation.streamMessages()) {
  if (message.senderAddress === xmtp.address) {
    // This message was sent from me
    continue
  }
  console.log(`New message from ${message.senderAddress}: ${message.content}`)
}

Listen for new messages in all conversations

To listen for any new messages from all conversations, use conversations.streamAllMessages().

Note
There is a chance this stream can miss messages if multiple new conversations are received in the time it takes to update the stream to include a new conversation.

Warning
This stream will continue infinitely. To end the stream you can call cancelStreamAllMessages().

for await (const message of await xmtp.conversations.streamAllMessages()) {
  if (message.senderAddress === xmtp.address) {
    // This message was sent from me
    continue
  }
  console.log(`New message from ${message.senderAddress}: ${message.content}`)
}

Request and respect user consent

The user consent feature enables your app to request and respect user consent preferences. With this feature, another blockchain account address registered on the XMTP network can have one of three consent preference values:

• Unknown
• Allowed
• Denied

To learn more, see Request and respect user consent.

Check if an address is on the network

If you would like to check and see if a blockchain address is registered on the network before instantiating a client instance, you can use Client.canMessage.

import { Client } from '@xmtp/xmtp-react-native'

const isOnDevNetwork = await Client.canMessage(
  '0x3F11b27F323b62B159D2642964fa27C46C841897'
)

Send a broadcast message

You can send a broadcast message (1:many message or announcement) with XMTP. The recipient sees the message as a DM from the sending wallet address.

For important information about sending broadcast messages, see Best practices for broadcast messages.

1. Use the bulk query canMessage method to identify the wallet addresses that are activated on the XMTP network.
2. Send the message to all of the activated wallet addresses.

For example:

const ethers = require('ethers')
const { Client } = require('@xmtp/xmtp-react-native')

async function main() {
  //Create a random wallet for example purposes. On the frontend you should replace it with the user's wallet (metamask, rainbow, etc)
  //Initialize the xmtp client
  const xmtp = await XMTP.Client.createRandom({ env: "dev" });

  //In this example we are going to broadcast to the GM_BOT wallet (already activated) and a random wallet (not activated)
  const GM_BOT = '0x937C0d4a6294cdfa575de17382c7076b579DC176'
  const test = ethers.Wallet.createRandom()
  const broadcasts_array = [GM_BOT, test.address]

  //Querying the activation status of the wallets
  const broadcasts_canMessage = await Client.canMessage(broadcasts_array)
  for (let i = 0; i < broadcasts_array.length; i++) {
    //Checking the activation status of each wallet
    const wallet = broadcasts_array[i]
    const canMessage = broadcasts_canMessage[i]
    if (broadcasts_canMessage[i]) {
      //If activated, start
      const conversation = await xmtp.conversations.newConversation(wallet)
      // Send a message
      const sent = await conversation.send('gm')
    }
  }
}
main()

Handle different types of content

All send functions support SendOptions as an optional parameter. The contentType option allows specifying different types of content than the default simple string standard content type, which is identified with content type identifier ContentTypeText.

To learn more about content types, see Content types with XMTP.

The SDK preregisters the following codecs:

• For Android, using these source codecs.

• For iOS, using these source codecs.

  await conversation.send({
    reaction: {
      reference: otherMessage.id,
      action: "added",
      schema: "unicode",
      content: "💖",
    },
  });

Manually handle private key storage

The SDK will handle key storage for the user by encrypting the private key bundle using a signature generated from the wallet, and storing the encrypted payload on the XMTP network. This can be awkward for some server-side applications, where you may only want to give the application access to the XMTP keys but not your wallet keys. Mobile applications may also want to store keys in a secure enclave rather than rely on decrypting the remote keys on the network each time the application starts up.

You can export the unencrypted key bundle using the static method Client.exportKeyBundle, save it somewhere secure, and then provide those keys at a later time to initialize a new client using the exported XMTP identity.

import { Client } from '@xmtp/xmtp-react-native'
// Get the keys using a valid Signer. Save them somewhere secure.
const keys = await Client.exportKeyBundle()
// Create a client using keys returned from getKeys
const client = await Client.createFromKeyBundle(keys, { env: "dev" })

The keys returned by exportKeyBundle should be treated with the utmost care as compromise of these keys will allow an attacker to impersonate the user on the XMTP network. Ensure these keys are stored somewhere secure and encrypted.

Enable the example app to send push notifications

Check out the push-notifications-example branch and follow instructions in the README.

🏗 Breaking revisions

Because xmtp-react-native is in active development, you should expect breaking revisions that might require you to adopt the latest SDK release to enable your app to continue working as expected.

XMTP communicates about breaking revisions in the XMTP Discord community, providing as much advance notice as possible. Additionally, breaking revisions in an xmtp-react-native release are described on the Releases page.

Deprecation

Older versions of the SDK will eventually be deprecated, which means:

1. The network will not support and eventually actively reject connections from clients using deprecated versions.
2. Bugs will not be fixed in deprecated versions.

Following table shows the deprecation schedule.

Announced	Effective	Minimum Version	Rationale
2022-08-18	2022-11-08	v6.0.0	XMTP network will stop supporting the Waku/libp2p based client interface in favor of the new GRPC based interface

Issues and PRs are welcome in accordance with our contribution guidelines.

XMTP production and dev network environments

XMTP provides both production and dev network environments to support the development phases of your project.

The production and dev networks are completely separate and not interchangeable. For example, for a given blockchain account address, its XMTP identity on dev network is completely distinct from its XMTP identity on the production network, as are the messages associated with these identities. In addition, XMTP identities and messages created on the dev network can't be accessed from or moved to the production network, and vice versa.

Important
When you create a client, it connects to the XMTP dev environment by default. To learn how to use the env parameter to set your client's network environment, see Configure the client.

The env parameter accepts one of three valid values: dev, production, or local. Here are some best practices for when to use each environment:

• dev: Use to have a client communicate with the dev network. As a best practice, set env to dev while developing and testing your app. Follow this best practice to isolate test messages to dev inboxes.

• production: Use to have a client communicate with the production network. As a best practice, set env to production when your app is serving real users. Follow this best practice to isolate messages between real-world users to production inboxes.

• local: Use to have a client communicate with an XMTP node you are running locally. For example, an XMTP node developer can set env to local to generate client traffic to test a node running locally.

The production network is configured to store messages indefinitely. XMTP may occasionally delete messages and keys from the dev network, and will provide advance notice in the XMTP Discord community.