Write your First mesibo Enabled Application - Javascript

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

In this part, we will create a simple real-time messaging and calling app for Android. This app will let you log in as two different users so that you can try various mesibo features.

We will quickly explore the following

  • Sending and Receiving Messages

  • Voice and Video Calls

  • Group Messaging

  • Group Calls (Conferencing)

  • Reading Messages from database

  • Using UI Modules

Prerequisites and Download Source Code

  • Read the section Create Users to learn about creating an app in mesibo console and creating users & access tokens for your app.
  • Basic knowledge of using Javascript
  • Download the source code for the First Javascript App from GitHub.
  • [Optional] You can download and run mesibo messenger app on one of your phones so that you can use it to test the First App.
  • The First App sample code for Angular 1 and Angular 13 is also available on GitHub. However, you should use it only after understanding and running basic Javascript first app.

Configure and Build First Javascript App

Now let’s quickly start coding:

Add mesibo API for javascript in your code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://api.mesibo.com/mesibo-v2.js"></script>

Code Explanation

Initialize mesibo

Before you send and receive real-time messages and calls, you need to initialize mesibo. The initialization involves the following steps:

  1. Use setAccessToken to set the user’s access token that you obtained while creating the user
  2. Set up mesibo to invoke your listener class using addListener
  3. Set up database to store sent and received messages using setDatabase (Optional)
  4. Start mesibo

Note that, except addListener, all other initialization functions should be only called once.

var demo_user_token = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';
/* App ID used to create a user token. */
var demo_appid = 'web';

var api = new Mesibo();

api.setListener(new MesiboListener());
api.setAppName(demo_app_id);
api.setAccessToken(demo_user_token);
api.setDatabase("mesibo");

api.start();

Implement MesiboListener to receive messages and status in real-time.

function MesiboListener() {
}

MesiboListener.prototype.Mesibo_onConnectionStatus = function(status, value) {
	console.log("Mesibo_onConnectionStatus: "  + status);
}

MesiboListener.prototype.Mesibo_onMessageStatus = function(m) {
	console.log("Mesibo_onMessageStatus: from "  
			+ m.peer + " status: " + m.status);
}

MesiboListener.prototype.Mesibo_onMessage = function(m) {
	/* Messaging documentation https://mesibo.com/documentation/api/messaging/ */
	if(msg.isIncoming()) {

		/* Profile documentation https://mesibo.com/documentation/api/users-and-profiles/ */
		var sender = msg.profile;

		// check if this message belongs to a group
	        /* Group Management - https://mesibo.com/documentation/api/group-management/ */
		if(msg.isGroupMessage()) {
			var group = msg.groupProfile;

		}

		// check if this message is realtime or read from the database
		if(msg.isRealtimeMessage()) {
			console.log("Mesibo_onMessage: from "  + sender.getNameOrAddress("") + " msg: " + msg.message);
		}

	} else if(msg.isOutgoing()) {

            /* messages you sent */
	       console.log("Mesibo_onMessage: sent a message with id: " + msg.mid);

        } else if(msg.isMissedCall()) {

        }
}

That’s it - you are now ready to send and receive your first real-time message.

Select Destination

As explained earlier, mesibo has two types of destinations, individual users and groups. Every valid mesibo user and group in your app are represented by MesiboProfile object. The MesiboProfile object has all the information about the user or group, for example, name, status, photo, etc. You can get a profile for any user or group by calling getProfile API. For example,

To get user profile,

var profile = api.getProfile(address, 0);

To get group profile,

var profile = Mesibo.getProfile(null, groupid)

Once you have the profile, you can perform various APIs like accessing profile information, sending messages to the destination, etc.

Sending and Receiving Messages

Now we will quickly learn how to send messages in real-time.

To send messages, you only need to create a MesiboMessage object for the destination, add your content (text message, files, location, etc.) and call send method. You can create a MesiboMessage object by calling

var msg = profile.newMessage();

where the profile is the user or group profile to whom you want to send a message. Once you create a MesiboMessage object, all you need to do is to add your message content and call send(). There is no difference between how you send messages to an individual user or a group, the destination is set based on the profile you have used to create MesiboMessage.

var msg = profile.createMessage();
msg.title = "Trying Mesibo";
msg.message = "My First Message";
msg.send();

You can also add a file using URL, or file id of the form as required. For example,

m.setContent('https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2019/08/02/09/39/mugunghwa-4379251_1280.jpg');
m.setContentType(MESIBO_FILETYPE_IMAGE);
msg.send();

You can also geotag your messages by adding location information,

msg.latitude = 37.4275;
msg.longitude = 122.1697;
msg.send();

Once you send a message, the recipient will receive the message through Mesibo_onMessage. mesibo will inform the sender of the message about the status of the message - sent, delivered, or read through the listener Mesibo_onMessageStatus.

Voice and Video Calls

mesibo allows you to enable peer-to-peer HD video and voice calls between your users in just a few lines of code. As with messaging, mesibo video and voice calls are encrypted and hence secure. mesibo does not charge any additional amount for the voice or video call APIs.

Making and receiving voice & video calls with mesibo is simple. You only need to initialize MesiboCall once using just two lines of code! Then, mesibo will automatically handle incoming calls. For outgoing calls, you can invoke call API as required.

You can use mesibo voice and video calls as it is. But, if you wish, you can customize it to your needs. For example, you can customize the call screen UI, filter incoming calls, etc. Refer to Call API Reference to learn more.

Video and Voice Call APIs

To make a voice call using mesibo Javascript SDK add an <audio> HTML element.

<audio id="audioPlayer" autoplay="autoplay" controls="controls" style="visibility:hidden; height:5px;"></audio>

Then, call the method setupVoiceCall and pass the id of your <audio> element. Place a call to the destination user using the call method.

//initialize mesibo API
//api is the initialized mesibo api object
...

api.setupVoiceCall("audioPlayer");
api.call("123"); //Make a voice call to user with address "123"

To make a video call using mesibo Javascript SDK add <video> HTML elements.

<div class="row" style="background-color: #f1f1f1;">
	<div class="col-6" style="padding: 10px;">
		<video id="localVideo" playsinline autoplay muted></video>
	</div>
	<div class="col-6" style="padding: 10px;">
		<video id="remoteVideo" playsinline autoplay></video>
	</div>
</div>

localVideo element to display your video(From your WebCam), remoteVideo element to display destination video.

Then, call the method setupVideoCall and pass the ids of your <video> elements you need to display: your local video and remote video. Place a call to the destination user using the call method.

//initialize mesibo API
//api is the initialized mesibo api object
...

api.setupVideoCall("localVideo", "remoteVideo", true);
api.call("123"); //Make a video call to user with address "123"

To handle incoming calls, implement Mesibo_onCall as follows:

MesiboListener.prototype.Mesibo_onCall = function(callid, from, video) {
	console.log("Mesibo_onCall: " + (video?"Video":"Voice") + " call from: " + from);
	if(video)
		this.api.setupVideoCall("localVideo", "remoteVideo", true);
	else
		this.api.setupVoiceCall("audioPlayer");
	
	// Show Incoming Call Screen
	var s = document.getElementById("ansBody");
	if(s)
		s.innerText = "Incoming " + (video?"Video":"Voice") + " call from: " + from;

	$('#answerModal').modal({ show: true });
}

In the first app tutorial we have now learned about two of the most fundamental mesibo APIs - the messaging API and call API. In the upcoming sections, we will learn more about various mesibo APIs and features that you can use. Such as group messaging, group calls, reading stored messages, UI Modules, etc.

Group Messaging and Group Calls

In this section, we will learn about group messaging and group calls(conferencing). The group messaging API is similar to the one-to-one messaging API and the group call API is similar to the one-to-one voice and video call API.

Group Messaging

Group messaging is no different from the one-to-one messaging. You can invoke the same messaging APIs to send a group message, instead of the user’s profile, you need to use group profile.

For example, here is an example of how you can send a message to a group. Let’s say you have a group with the group-id 96568. Now, you use the same function that you use for sending a one-to-one message, but instead of using the user profile, you first get the group profile using the group-id and use it to send a group message.

Using Javascript,

var profile = api.getProfile(null, 96568);
var m = profile.newMessage();
m.message = "My First Group Message";
m.send();

A message sent will be delivered to all members of the group and you will get the message delivery and read status for each user.

Creating a Group

To create a group and add members, you need to use the Group Management APIs. This is the recommended approach. However, you can also create a group and add/remove members by using backend APIs and mesibo console if requires.

You can create a new group by calling createGroup API, with name and the Group Listener Object.

In Java,

api.createGroup("My Group From JS", 0, function(profile) {
		console.log("group created");
		addMembers(profile);
	});
}

It will send a request to the server to create a new group. When a group is created, callback function in the listener will be called with the group profile. You can then add members to the group using group profile APIs.

You can now use this new group profile for messaging, adding more members or changing group name, description, picture, etc.

Adding members to a Group

You can add members, and admins to the group by calling addMembers API of the group profile. You need to pass the addresses of the users to be added as group members, permissions to be granted and admin permissions if you are adding them as group admins.

For example,

function addMembers(profile) {
	var gp = profile.getGroupProfile();
	var members = ["123456", "112233"];
	gp.addMembers(members, MESIBO_MEMBERFLAG_ALL, 0);
}

Group Calls (Conferencing)

mesibo group calling simply extends the existing features of group messaging with additional permissions and control, for example, room resolution, talk detection, who can publish and who can video, voice+video or voice only, etc. Your existing groups will now have additional conferencing settings.

To add mesibo Group Calling to your app, here is an overview of steps to follow:

  1. Have a group of members with required permissions
  2. Create a group call object with groupCall()
  3. To publish your stream to the group, get a Participant object using createPublisher and make a call()
  4. To subscribe to other users’ streams, get their call object in MesiboGroupCall_OnPublisher and make a call()
  5. Display the stream using setVideoView

For detailed documentation and examples for conferencing refer to Mesibo Conferencing Docs and download the example source code for conferencing from GitHub

You can also try a live demo of a Zoom-like conferencing app, Mesibo Live built using mesibo conferencing and streaming API. The source code of the app is available on Github. You can download it, modify or rebrand it, and integrate it into your app or website.

Reading Messages & Call History

mesibo provides a set of APIs to read messages and call history stored in the database and sending read receipts. A read receipt is an acknowledgment that the user has read the message.

To read stored messages from the database, you need to create a read session and set the criteria to read messages; for example,

  • read all messages
  • read call history
  • read messages from a sender
  • read messages for a particular group
  • read messages matching a search query etc.

The read session you create filters the messages in the database based on the criteria provided and gives the resulting list of messages to you.

Reading Modes

There are two modes of operation:

  • Read Messages and call logs. This mode is enabled by default
  • Read Summary (active conversations), read the latest message from each user and group. This allows you to get a snapshot of all the communicating users and groups. You can then create another read session to read messages for any of those users or groups.

Reading Order

Once you set a read session, you can start reading messages by calling read API. You can read messages in the first-in-first-out (FIFO) mode or the last-in-first-out (LIFO) mode. In the first-in-first-out model, the oldest messages are read first. By default, the first-in-first-out mode is disabled.

Read Receipts

You can enable the automatic sending of read-receipts every time you read a message. This can be achieved by enabling a read-receipt for the read session. On reading or receiving a message, read receipts will be automatically sent if

  • The app is set to be in the foreground
  • Sending Read Receipt is enabled for the reading session, AND
  • Read receipt requested by the sender, AND
  • A new real-time or database message matches the read session.

A call to read will return the number of messages read. You can call read on demand. For example, in the case of a messaging app, you only need to show the latest messages on the screen initially. So, first, you can call read(10) to load the last 10 messages. As the user scrolls up the chat history, you can call read again. All subsequent calls to read will read older messages.

To read messages and call history for a user or a group,

var rs = profile.createReadSession(listener);
rs.enableReadReceipt(true);
rs.read(100);

To read the last message from each user and group (summary),

var summarySession = new MesiboReadSession(listener);
summarySession.enableSummary(true);
summarySession.read(100);

First mesibo Application - C/C++ >>

mesibo, js, javascript