Change Log

This contains only the most important and/or user-facing changes; for a full changelog, see the commit history.

0.3.0 (2025-01-06)

Please see UPGRADING.md for full guidance on upgrading from version 0.2.1 and before.

The default typing timeout has now been reduced to 5 seconds. #361
Room and Connection status types have been renamed. #382
Renamed the timeserial field on the Message type to serial. Messages may now be compared for global order by string comparison of this field.
Rooms.get is now asynchronous and returns a Promise that will resolve once any release operations on the room are complete. #387.
The Room.channel property is now an instance of Ably.RealtimeChannel, rather than a Promise. #387
In React, accessing the room via useRoom, or properties of the room via other hooks, now returns ValueType | undefined. Once the room's promise is resolved (see above), this will update to the actual value. #387
The default Room status is now Initialized. The Initializing status is retained for use in React when the room has not yet been resolved. #387
The direction argument to message history has been replaced by orderBy, which uses a new enum OrderBy with values OldestFirst and NewestFirst. Its behavior is identical to direction: forwards | backwards.

### Fixed Bugs

The Room will now transition immediately to released if release is called whilst its status is Initialized. #400
When paginating messages (e.g. via getPreviousMessages) the objects returned by successive pages will now fully implement the Message interface. Previously they were simple JSON objects after the first page. #403.
Fixed a bug whereby a room may get stuck in the Suspended status after network issues. #409

ably-chat is no longer a reserved key on Message and Reaction metadata/headers. #374

Fixed a bug that can lead to unhandled promise rejections and error logs when a room is released prior to initialization, particularly in React #352

Added hooks and providers for React, to allow a closer integration with these ecosystems. For more information on how to get started with Chat in React, see the React README.
When a new room is returned from rooms.get() we now guarantee that the returned object is usable. Previously if the room was being released, the releasing room was returned. If needed, async operations wait for the previous release to finish behind-the-scenes.
Added message parsing helpers that convert regular Ably Pub/Sub messages into Chat entities, which can be used on existing post-publish channel rules #249.
Improved documentation around getting previous messages for a given subscription #328
The CDN bundle for the core Chat SDK is now in UMD format, as opposed to ESM. This will still work in both browsers and Node. The README instructions have been updated to reflect this #333.