What is a Chat API?

When exploring the functionality of a Chat API you should at the very least expect that it can handle a few essential features such as; 

• Real-time direct messaging through websockets
  Direct messaging should provide a user experience that is similar to or, preferably, better than the user experience of sending text messages on a phone. A good direct messaging solution should provide users with a chat view that remains persistent and updates in real time as new messages are sent and received. 
• Group messaging
  Chat API should factor in the need to accommodate several different participants in a single conversation. That means providing a means for users to identify which users are sending what messages. There are a few ways to provide user identification, including name labels, user avatars, differently colored text boxes, or some combination of all three. 
• Push notifications
  Notifications that can be sent to users when another user sends a message. There are several ways this can be handled, but one of the most common and simple integrations is to enable push notifications via a REST API. If a chat API provider doesn’t provide those in-app chat features then it simply isn’t worth your investment.

Quality-of-life features

A properly enabled typing indicator allows a user to see when another user is currently drafting a message.

Read receipts are exactly what they sound like, an indication that the other user in a chat has read a message sent to them. Some APIs go the extra mile and provide something called delivery receipts, which allow a sender to know that their message has been received, but not read. For privacy reasons, many Chat APIs allow users to determine whether or not they want to enable read receipts.

Reactions allow users to “react” to messages with an emoji, this allows a way to provide simple feedback without the need to send another message.

To give users a more media-rich chat experience, many Chat APIs provide the ability to generate URL previews, which parse website metadata to give users a preview of links that have been placed in the chat. 

Allows users to preview images, videos, or audio files sent over chat. 

Chat APIs and SDKs which  allow custom meeting links enable users to easily convert a text conversation into a meeting.

These features can usually be enabled out of the box, though some may have to be enabled by configuring your chat API.

A UI Kit (short for user interface kit) is a package of files designed to expedite the development of a user interface. Chat UI Kits typically include important components such as fonts, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) stylesheets, and graphical elements such as containers, input controls, navigation controls, and icons. Most UI kits are compiled for specific frontend libraries or framework libraries such as Vue or React. Though there are several resources available to help you create your own custom messaging  UI kit, this shouldn’t be necessary if your Chat API provider offers the chat UI kit that works with your favorite programming library and language.

When evaluating a messaging UI kit, you should be looking at :

Should provide all the chat and messaging UI components your app requires, including things like message windows, send buttons, avatar placeholders, typing indicators, and read receipts.

This comes in the form of styling. An UI kit only works for you if you can make it match the style of your app. This means you should be able to style any component of the kit however you need in order to create the most cohesive user experience.

React.js, more commonly referred to as React, has become one of the most popular front end library for web applications. One of the biggest benefits of using React over traditional javascript is that React requires far less code to build an interface. React operates by breaking down an entire interface  into reusable modules known as components. Originally developed by Facebook as a way to reduce overall server load and increase the responsiveness of their UI, it was made open source and quickly found widespread adoption. When adding in app chat to your react app, using a chat API provider with support for React is one of the most simple and effective ways to do so. A react chat API is any chat API that provides a prebuilt React component for building a chat interface A good React chat API will provide users with a React UI kit, and in some cases a React Native Chat UI kit for developers who are primarily focused on building mobile apps using React Native.

Of course, while React has become a top alternative to traditional JS, there are still developers who rely on Javascript who need to integrate a chat API. That’s why many chat API and SDK providers also offer a javascript chat UI. It’s important to note that there’s usually no such thing as JS Chat API, it would be more accurate to say that there are several chat APIs that support javascript through these UI kits. In that sense, any Chat API that provides compatibility with javascript apps is a JS Chat API.

Chat API Provider

A Chat API Provider is a third-party service that handles all the complexities of building and maintaining a chat server. These complexities includes automatically scaling the chat server or provisioning database and virtual machine resources to store data and run the backend applications respectively. 

Developers integrate Chat API providers into the frontend client of their product either through a Chat API or Chat SDK supported by the Chat Provider. To minimize cost, Chat API Providers use a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYUG) model to ensure that developers only pay for the resources their frontend clients consume.

Chat API 

An API is the communication protocol for interacting with a service. A Chat API makes it possible for developers to integrate a chat server into their frontend clients and perform CREATE, RETRIEVE, UPDATE and DELETE (CRUD) operations on the chat resources created by the Chat API Provider.  

Developers access Chat APIs over secure or encrypted HTTP connections through their REST or GraphQL endpoints and they require authentication to protect sensitive user data.

Chat SDK

A Software Development Kit (SDK) contains lines of well-documented code for developers to use when building an application. In most cases, an SDK abstracts over an external API and provides easy-to-use methods or functions to interact with. 

In a Chat context, a Chat SDK makes it less complex for developers to build a chat application as it abstracts over the Chat API and handles difficult aspects of working with the Chat API such as managing the API authentication state, request or timeout retries.

Chat UI Kit

A User Interface (UI) Kit is a package of files designed to expedite the development of a user interface. UI Kits include important visual components such as fonts, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) stylesheets, and graphical elements such as containers, input controls, navigation controls, and icons. 

Most UI kits are designed for specific frontend libraries or framework such as Vue, React, or Svelte.

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