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How to Implement Live Chat for Live Streaming

How to Implement Live Chat for Live Streaming

In live streaming, live chat is a vital bridge between hosts and their audience. It fosters direct engagement, enables hosts to answer questions in real time, and cultivates a sense of community. This connection enhances viewer retention and enriches the streaming environment.

Moreover, the interactive nature of live chat injects an element of excitement and unpredictability into the live stream. Viewers become active participants, contributing to discussions, sharing their thoughts, and even influencing the content’s direction. This two-way communication transforms passive viewers into engaged collaborators, fostering a dynamic and immersive atmosphere that encourages repeat viewership.

In this guide, we will walk through how to implement the live chat feature in live streaming.

Implement the Live Chat Feature

The main need for live chat is to allow the audience to have direct interaction with the host, and only simple text messages need to be sent. Compared to group messages in in-app chat, it’s a lot simpler.

  • It doesn’t need to pull historical messages.
  • It doesn’t need to have message receipts.
  • It doesn’t need to send pictures or video messages.
Implement the live chat feature

As shown in the figure, ZEGOCLOUD provides users with a signaling channel to send live chat, you just need to call the interface to send and receive messages, and implement your own UI to display the messages.

  1. The participant calls the sendBarrageMessage method to send a message.
  2. Other participants monitor the onIMRecvBarrageMessage method to receive the message and then display it.

Custom Configure

If you want to show the user’s avatar, level and other information in the live chat, you need to send the user’s information in one piece when you send the message.

In order to send more messages in the sendBarrageMessage interface, it is recommended to send the following JSON String.

{
    "n": "James",
    "a": "https://www.zegocloud.com/24/09/01/fafaf.jpg",
    "s": 1, 
    "l": 12,
    "m": "Hi, nice to meet you"
}
KeyTypeDescription
nStringUser name
aStringUser avatar
sIntUser sex
lIntUser level
mStringmessage info

Since the sendBarrageMessage interface can only send 1024 bytes, it’s recommended to use single letters instead of full keys in JSON to save characters for message content. Additionally, limit the input message length on the UI to control messages within 200 characters.

If 1024 bytes is not enough for your needs, you can use our in-app-chat SDK to implement the Live Chat Feature instead. Message type: ZIMBarrageMessage, Size limit: 5 KB

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