Amity SDK provides developers with a powerful set of tools for creating a wide range of post types with support for a broad range of content formats, users can create highly dynamic and engaging posts that help to drive user engagement and increase retention, including:

• Text Post

• Image Post

• File Post

• Video Post

• Live stream Post

• Poll Post

• Custom Post

We provide a method for creating each type of post. To create a post, you must first select the target type. The target type is either a user or a community.

• User: If you wish to create a post on someone else's feed, provide their user ID as the targetId and set the target type to the user. If you want to create a post on your own feed, leave the target ID empty.

• Community: To make a post on a specific community, set the target type to community and provide the community ID.

Each post can have up to 20,000 characters, and custom posts should not have JSON data that is larger than 100KB.

Prior to creating an image post, it is crucial to upload the images that will be included in the post data to ensure that the necessary information is accessible and can be linked to the post. This requires uploading the image first, to obtain the image data that will be used in creating the image post. To upload an image, please refer to #upload-images.

Upon successful completion of the image upload process, you can include the image data as a parameter when creating an image post, as demonstrated in the code sample below.

Here's an explanation of the method's parameters:

• text: This is a required parameter of type String, which represents the text content of the new post. You can pass in any text you want to include in the post, up to a maximum length of 20,000 characters.

• images: Which represents an array of images uploaded by the user on Android, iOS and Flutter and imageIds for Typescript and Javascript to include in the new post. You can pass up to 10 images in a post.

• targetType - Type of the target, either a particular community or a user feed.

• tags - Arbitrary strings that can be used for defining and querying for the posts.

• metaData - Additional properties to support custom fields.

normalPostStructure + {
  dataType: “image”,
  data: { imageId: File[“fileId”] }
}

iOS ​ Android ​ Web TypeScript React Native Flutter

Amity Social SDK allows engineers to integrate social communities and user feed capabilities without the hassle of deploying and maintaining any server infrastructure. Companies can now build user-powered social news feeds and notifications into their mobile and web app in no time. Enabling you to engage your customers with the same tools used by many of the popular social applications.

Let users create engaging content and engage with others through comments and reactions. Users can follow other users or topics and become members of various groups to get a personalized timeline of content.

Activity feeds are also a great feature to directly engage with users. You can communicate with your users directly by posting important messages as announcements.

Amity social SDK allows you to:

• Connect users through formation of communities

• Boost user engagement by user-generated posts/comments in communities

• Personalize the feed based on user’s membership to different groups and communities

• React to user-generated content with our reaction tools

• Enable comments on posts within your application, seamlessly

• Support multiple messaging formats when posting content

• Manage & moderate communities and users in admin panel

• Filter out content that includes profanity using our auto-block tools

• Assign roles and permissions on a role-based system

Features

Communities

This page will guide you through the steps you need to take to integrate communities into your applications.

Posts

Here's an overview of posts and how you can get started with integrating them into your applications.

Comments

Here's an overview of how you can get started integrating comments into your applications‌.

Reactions

Let users react to messages, posts, and comments, which are visible to others.

Feed & Timeline

Let your users showcase their unique personalities right in their timelines‌.

Follow/Unfollow

Lets you create a relationship between your users in social features.

Prior to creating a live stream post, it is crucial to create the live stream that will be included in the post data to ensure that the necessary information is accessible and can be linked to the post. This requires creating the live stream first, to obtain the data that will be used in creating the live stream post. For more information regarding live stream, please refer to #live-stream

As demonstrated in the code sample below, here's a way to create a live stream.

import { StreamRepository, StreamResolutions } from '@amityco/js-sdk'

const liveObject = StreamRepository.createStream({
  title: 'title',
  thumbnailFileId: 'fileId', // use FileRepository.createFile to upload the file and get the id
  description: 'description',
  resolution: StreamResolutions.HD,
  metadata: { customField: 'customValue' },
});

liveObject.on('dataUpdated', (stream) => {
  console.log(stream);
});

Upon successful completion of the live stream process, you can include the stream ID as a parameter when creating a live stream post, as demonstrated in the code sample below.

Here's an explanation of the method's parameters:

• text: This is a required parameter of type String, which represents the text content of the new post. You can pass in any text you want to include in the post, up to a maximum length of 20,000 characters.

• streamId: The ID of the created live stream to include in a post.

• targetType - Type of the target, either a particular community or a user feed.

• tags - Arbitrary strings that can be used for defining and querying for the posts.

• metaData - Additional properties to support custom fields.

A post can be defined as a piece of content created and shared by a user within a network or community. The post can include various types of information such as text, images, videos, links, or other multimedia elements. The SDK provides the necessary tools and functionality for users to create, view, and interact with posts in a social feed. Posts can be displayed in chronological order and can be customized and configured using various settings and options provided by the SDK. The purpose of a post in a product context is to allow users to share information, express thoughts, or connect with others within a social network or community using the SDK.

Amity supports a wide range of post types, each with its own unique set of features and capabilities. The types of posts that you can create in Amity include text, image, video, file, live stream, poll, and custom posts. Furthermore, a post supports real-time events and Live Object features, for more information please refer to Live Objects/Collections and Realtime Events

Post Structure

The post structure is a parent-child relationship, with the parent post serving as a container for text data, for other post types such as images or videos, while each individual image or video is treated as a separate child post. To illustrate this, let's take the example of an image post with two images. In this case, there would be one parent post serving as a text container, and two child posts, each containing one of the images.

In addition to enabling users to create more dynamic and engaging content, both parent and child posts also support reactions and comments. This means that users can interact with not only the parent post but also with each individual child post, providing a more comprehensive and engaging way to engage with content.

Post Repository

The functionality of posts can be utilized through the Post Repository, which offers methods for interacting with a data source that stores posts. This includes methods for obtaining a specific post, creating a new post, updating an existing post, or deleting a post.

import { PostRepository } from '@amityco/js-sdk';

Post Description

Prior to creating a file post, it is crucial to upload the files that will be included in the post data to ensure that the necessary information is accessible and can be linked to the post. This requires uploading the file first, to obtain the file data that will be used in creating the file post. To upload a file, please refer to #upload-files

Upon successful completion of the file upload process, you can include the file data as a parameter when creating a file post, as demonstrated in the code sample below.

Here's an explanation of the method's parameters:

• text: This is a required parameter of type String, which represents the text content of the new post. You can pass in any text you want to include in the post, up to a maximum length of 20,000 characters.

• files: Which represents an array of files uploaded by the user on Android, iOS and Flutter and fileIds for Typescript and Javascript to include in the new post. You can pass up to 10 files in a post.

• targetType - Type of the target, either a particular community or a user feed.

• tags - Arbitrary strings that can be used for defining and querying for the posts.

• metaData - Additional properties to support custom fields.

Text posts are a simple yet powerful way to create and share text-based content with other users on our platform. With the Amity Social SDK, users can quickly and easily create text posts and add them to a user's or community's feed. As demonstrated in the code sample below, you can simply include the text data as a parameter when creating a text post.

Here's an explanation of the method's parameters:

• text: This is a required parameter of type String, which represents the text content of the new post. You can pass in any text you want to include in the post, up to a maximum length of 20,000 characters.

• targetType - Type of the target, either a particular community or a user feed.

• metaData - Additional properties to support custom fields.

• tags - Arbitrary strings that can be used for defining and querying for the posts.

Prior creating a video post, it is crucial to upload the videos that will be included in the post data to ensure that the necessary information is accessible and can be linked to the post. This requires uploading the video first, to obtain the video data that will be used in creating the video post. To upload a video, please refer to #upload-videos

Upon successful completion of the video upload process, you can include the video data as a parameter when creating a video post, as demonstrated in the code sample below.

Here's an explanation of the method's parameters:

• text: This is a required parameter of type String, which represents the text content of the new post. You can pass in any text you want to include in the post, up to a maximum length of 20,000 characters.

• videos: Which represents an array of videos uploaded by the user on Android, iOS and Flutter and videoIds for Typescript and Javascript to include in the new post. You can pass up to 10 videos in a post.

• targetType - Type of the target, either a particular community or a user feed.

• tags - Arbitrary strings that can be used for defining and querying for the posts.

• metaData - Additional properties to support custom fields.

Requirements for Video

• Supported video types are 3gp, avi, f4v, flv, m4v, mov, mp4, ogv, 3g2, wmv, vob, webm, mkv

• The maximum file size of the video is 1 GB

• The maximum duration of the video is 2 hours

If you'd like to display content on your app that cannot be represented by the available text, image, video, and file post types, you can create your own custom post type. Custom post types allow you to include the necessary data for rendering, such as additional metadata and custom data formatting. This is useful if you want to present specific types of content to your users.

To create a custom post type, you can query the user, community, or global feed using our SDK's APIs. Please refer to Feed. For additional information on rendering custom posts with UIKit, please see Post Rendering.

• dataType - a string that defines the type of the post so you can distinguish your new post from others

• data - a free-form JSON object that can be customized based on your use cases.

• attachments - images and other files you want to include in your post. You can only attach one file type. This means that it must either be all images, all files, or all video files.

• tags - text that will be used in post query. You can add up to five tags. Each tag can have a maximum length of 24 characters.

Post Structure

In Amity's social SDK, posts with images, files, or videos follow a Parent-Child relationship, where each uploaded image/file is represented as a separate child post. When creating an image/file post, any text that is set will act as the Parent post. The Parent post contains a child posts property, which provides an array of AmityPost instances for each child post. For more information about post structure, please refer to -

Each instance of a Post holds several pieces of information, including data, reactions, comments, metadata, child posts, and more. For text posts, you can access the actual data of the post through the data property. Similarly, for child posts, developers can also access the data through the same data property. Additionally, more details about uploaded files and images can be accessed through the provided functions; such as getFileInfo() or getImageInfo().

To illustrate this concept, consider a post that contains both text and an image. In this case, the parent post would be a text post, and its child post would be an image post. By accessing the child posts property of the parent post, you can easily access and manage the child post information, allowing for a more flexible and efficient approach to managing posts in social applications.

Image Post

Posting visual content such as photos, graphics, or images is facilitated by this type of post. The maximum size for an image is 1 GB, and the image will be automatically transformed into four different sizes for versatile usage which are:

• Small

• Medium

• Large

• Full

If you are using your own implementation to download image of appropriate size, you need to construct the download url yourself by appending size query parameter.

For example, to download a small image:

File Post

Video Post

This is a useful type of post for sharing video content within a feed, such as a short clip or a longer video. The maximum size for a video is 1 GB, and the video will be automatically transcoded into different resolutions for versatile usage which are

• 1080p

• 720p

• 480p

• 360p

• original

Live stream Post

Poll Post

In Amity's social SDK, there are two types of post deletion: soft delete and hard delete. When a post is soft deleted, it is simply marked as deleted, with the isDeleted flag set to true in the database. The post still exists in the database, but is no longer visible to users. By contrast, when a post is hard deleted, all associated data, including reactions, comments, child posts, and related data, is permanently removed from the database. This makes it impossible to retrieve the data once it has been hard deleted.

To perform a hard delete, developers can pass a boolean value of true to the delete post method in the PostRepository. For a soft delete, the boolean value should be false. If no deletion type is specified, the default is soft deletion. By offering these two types of post deletion, Amity's social SDK provides developers with flexibility and control over managing their posts and associated data.

The Social SDK product includes a powerful Posts Query method that allows users to search for and retrieve posts that match specific criteria. This functionality is useful for a variety of use cases and provides a flexible and customizable approach to managing and displaying content in your app. Furthermore, the result of the method will always return as .

Use-case Examples

Posts Query API can be useful for the use cases that require flattening the search and results. For example:

• All posts in a community or user feed

• Media gallery that shows the list of all images, posted by a user

• List of all the text posts that are deleted in a community

Query Options

The Posts Query method is capable of retrieving and searching all posts on the server that match the specified criteria, which are:

• targetId - ID of the community or user respectively.

• targetType - Type of the target, either a particular community or a user feed.

• types - available post types are video, image, file, liveStream , poll and custom post. Alternatively, if you don't specify a particular post type, it will return all post types for a specific target.

• includeDeleted - Deletion filter. When the boolean is set to true, it retrieves both deleted and non-deleted posts. Conversely, when set to false, only non-deleted posts are returned. The default state of the boolean is false. Additionally, it excludes all deleted posts (both soft and hard deleted posts) not owned by the logged-in user. Community moderators have visibility of soft-deleted posts in the community feed, while self-users can see their own soft-deleted posts in their user feed.

• sortBy - When it is set to "lastCreated", the most recently created posts will appear at the top of the result. Conversely, when the "sortOption" is set to "firstCreated", the earliest created posts will be displayed at the top of the result.

• feedType - Type of the feed, for possible feedTypes please refer to - .

The Amity SDK provides a functionality that allows you to work with social features in your application, including the ability to retrieve a post. In this section, we'll explore how to use the Amity SDK to retrieve a single post from your application. By using a specific function provided by the SDK, you can retrieve a post based on its ID, which provides a convenient way to access specific post data. The retrieved result is returned as a live object of a post. For more information on live objects, please refer to .

To retrieve multiple posts, you can use getPostByIds method provided by PostRepository. This method accepts a collection of postId as a parameter and returns a ofAmityPost.

Prior to creating a poll post, it is crucial to create the poll that will be included in the post data to ensure that the necessary information is accessible and can be linked to the post. This requires creating the poll first, to obtain the data that will be used in creating the poll post. For more information about polls including vote, close, or delete a poll, please refer to the page - .

• text: This is a required parameter of type String, which represents the text content of the new post. You can pass in any text you want to include in the post, up to a maximum length of 20,000 characters.

• pollId: The ID of the created poll to include in a post.

• targetType - Type of the target, either a particular community or a user feed.

• tags - Arbitrary strings that can be used for defining and querying for the posts.

As demonstrated in the code sample below, here's a way to create a poll and poll post.

• metaData - Additional properties to support custom fields.

Mentions allow users to tag other users in posts. It's a powerful tool for fostering engagement and collaboration within your social application. With mentions, users can easily notify specific individuals or groups to new content or important updates. In the SDK, mentions can be implemented in a range of ways, depending on your application's needs and user experience. For more information about mentions, please refer to .

Create Post with Mentions

You can easily mention users when creating a post by including their user IDs in the mention user parameter as well as defining metadata for mention rendering. For further explanation, please refer to .

Update Post with Mentions

We provide developers with an efficient method for updating posts with mentions of specific users, you can easily add mentions to their post updates and but it will not notify the relevant users.

To remove mentions you can provide an empty JSON object for the metadata parameter, and an empty list for the mention users parameter. By doing so, You can easily remove mentions from the post content, while ensuring that the overall structure of the post remains intact.

Render Mentions

Flag Post

The SDK provides a way for users to report or flag a post as inappropriate using the flag method.

This method allows users to notify the community moderators or admins about posts that they believe violate the community guidelines or are otherwise inappropriate. By flagging a post, users can help ensure that the community remains a safe and welcoming place for all members.

Check for isFlaggedByMe

This method allows users to quickly determine whether they have previously flagged a post as inappropriate or not. To use this method, users can call the isFlaggedByMe method with the postId as a parameter. The method will then return a boolean value indicating whether or not the post has been flagged by the current user.

Unflag Post

This method allows users to retract their earlier report if they believe that the flagged post no longer violates the community guidelines or if they mistakenly reported the post. By unflagging a post, users can help ensure that the community moderators or admins can focus their attention on other reported posts that may still require attention.

Amity SDK supports the editing of the following post types:

• Text post

• Image post

• File post

• Video post

Edit a Post

Amity Social SDK provides a post editing functionality that fosters accountability and user awareness within your application. This feature enables users to edit their own posts exclusively. Users can only edit their own posts, except that you're an admin or a moderator of a particular community. The functionality encourages responsible interactions and maintains accountability. Upon completing an edit operation, the SDK updates the editedAt property to the current time, reflecting the changes made by the user. You can then leverage the updated editedAt timestamp to create a user interface that informs users of edited posts, fostering transparency. You can edit a post by follow this sample code.

Get Active Stories

The 'getActiveStories()' function within the AmitySDK enables users to query non-expired stories based on a specified target, providing a LiveCollection of stories for seamless playback and browsing. Notably, the AmitySDK supports optimistic story creation, including unsynced stories within the collection. In sorting, priority is accorded to unsynced stories followed by synced ones, with secondary sorting based on the 'sortOption.' It is important to note that real-time exclusion of expired stories from LiveCollection is not supported.

This function requires two parameters: targetType, targetId.

Here's an explanation of the function parameters:

• targetType: Represents the type of target, currently supporting 'community.'

• targetId: Corresponds to the ID of the designated target.

• sortOption: Specifies the secondary sorting order for stories within the collection as 'firstCreated' or 'LastCreated.' The default value is 'firstCreated,' organizing stories chronologically based on creation time.

To provide better control and moderation over community posts, the Amity SDK includes a feature that allows community owners to review and approve posts before they appear on the community's feed. This feature allows for a more streamlined and organized approach to managing community content. With Post Review enabled, any post created within a community will first be placed in a Reviewing feed. After approval, it will be moved to the Published feed, while declined posts will be moved to the Declined feed.

Feed Types

• reviewing - when a post is created in a community with Post Review enabled, it is initially placed in the Reviewing feed.

• published - If a post is approved by a moderator or creator, it is moved to the Published feed.

• declined - If a post is declined by a moderator or creator, it is moved to the Declined feed.

const isPublished = post.feedType === FeedType.Published;
const isUnderReview = post.feedType === FeedType.Reviewing;
const isDeclined = post.feedType === FeedType.Declined;

Get Feed Type

The AmityPost object within the Amity SDK provides a method that allows users to retrieve the feed type of a post by calling post.getFeedType(). This method enables developers to easily determine the current feed that a post belongs to. Understanding the feed type of a post is important for implementing moderation features, as different feeds have different access and permission levels.

Post Approval

Within the Amity SDK, there are methods available to moderators and creators of a community that allows them to approve or decline posts.

Approve

By calling the method, the selected post will be approved and will appear on the community's feed.

Decline

By calling the method, the selected post will be declined and will disappear from the community's reviewing feed.

Community Feed Query

To retrieve a list of posts from the Reviewing feed, users with the AmityPermission.REVIEW_COMMUNITY_POST can retrieve all posts, while users without this permission can only retrieve their own reviewing posts. Users without moderation permissions will receive only posts they created for the Reviewing and Declined feeds.

Stories, unlike traditional posts, excel in sharing time-sensitive updates like promotions or event highlights. The SDK provides tools for creating, viewing, and interacting with diverse story content—images, videos, links—allowing configurable content duration and expiry periods. Additionally, our dashboard offers insights through basic analytics such as views, unique users, comments, reactions, and Click-Through Rate (CTR).

Story Structure

A Story is multi-layered. The primary content, "Data," depending on the dataType, can be either an IMAGE or a VIDEO. The secondary content, "StoryItems," complements the main content, serving as additional components. For instance, the first supported StoryItem is a Hyperlink, containing URL information and its alias. Overlaying the main content allows users to click and be redirected to the predefined destination.

Story Repository

The functionality of stories can be utilized through the StoryRepository, which offers methods for interacting with a data source that stores stories. This includes methods for obtaining stories, creating a new story, and deleting a story.

Story schema

StoryTarget schema

The Post Impression feature in our Amity Social Cloud SDK is a tool designed to collect valuable data regarding post interactions for analytics and reporting purposes. This feature empowers users to gain insights into how their content is performing and who is actively engaging with it. With this feature, users can mark specific posts as viewed and access information about impressions, reach, and the list of users who have viewed each post.

Marking post as viewed

The SDK provides an ability to mark any post as viewed by invoking markAsViewed() method within post.analytics, which will increase the impression and reach count of specific posts. Additionally, users can easily access the impression and reach counts directly from the post object within the SDK.

Query viewed users

The SDK provides an ability to query a list of unique users who have viewed the specific post. This functionality is available through invoking getViewedUsers(postId) within the UserRepository and will return the live collection of user objects.

There are two types of story deletion: soft delete and hard delete. When a story is soft deleted, it is simply marked as deleted, with the isDeleted flag set to true in the database. The story still exists in the database, but is no longer visible to users. By contrast, when a story is hard deleted, all associated data, including reactions, comments is permanently removed from the database. This makes it impossible to retrieve the data once it has been hard deleted. Note that both soft delete and hard delete permanently remove unsynced stories from cache.

Soft Delete Story

The 'softDeleteStory()' function allows users to mark a story as deleted on the server, rendering it inaccessible to users.

This function requires one parameter: 'storyId.' Here's an explanation of the function parameter:

• storyId: Corresponds to the ID of the story.

Hard Delete Story

The 'hardDeleteStory()' function permanently deletes the story and all associated data, including reactions and comments from the server.

This function requires one parameter: 'storyId.' Here's an explanation of the function parameter:

• storyId: Corresponds to the ID of the story.

The SDK offers developers a suite of functions to craft stories available in two distinct types: Image and Video.

• Image: An Image story facilitates the use of an image file of up to 1GB,

• Video: A video story accommodates video files sized up to 2GB with a maximum duration of 90 seconds. The duration setting is adjustable at the network level, providing flexibility in configuration.

Each story creation offers optional StoryItems. The first supported item type, HyperLink, enables inclusion of a URL and an alias, augmenting the story with additional content for user interaction. This feature allows seamless navigation to specified destinations upon story viewing. It's important to note that the provided URL undergoes validation by the system against a predefined whitelist, configurable at the network level.

To initiate story creation, the first step involves selecting the target type. Currently, the supported targetType is 'community,' necessitating the specification of a communityId for story creation within a specific community.

Create Image Story

The SDK provides the 'createImageStory()' function, allowing users to create a story with an image on the specified target.

This function requires three parameters: targetType, targetId, and imageFile.

Here's an explanation of the function parameters:

• targetType: Represents the type of target, currently supporting 'community.'

• targetId: Corresponds to the ID of the designated target.

• imageFile: Denotes the image file intended to be attached to the story.

• storyItems: Additional information that can accompany the story, currently supporting a URL and its alias.

• imageDisplayMode: Dictates how the image should be displayed on the user interface. Either FIT or FILL.

• metadata: Provides support for additional properties, facilitating the use of custom fields.

Create Video Story

The SDK provides the 'createVideoStory()' function, allowing users to create a story with a video on the specified target.

This function requires three parameters: targetType, targetId, and videoFile.

Here's an explanation of the function parameters:

• targetType: Represents the type of target, currently supporting 'community.'

• targetId: Corresponds to the ID of the designated target.

• videoFile: Denotes the video file intended to be attached to the story.

• storyItems: Additional information that can accompany the story, currently supporting a URL and its alias.

• metadata: Provides support for additional properties, facilitating the use of custom fields.

The Story Impression feature is a tool designed to collect valuable data regarding story interactions for analytics and reporting purposes. This feature empowers users to gain insights into how their content is performing and who is actively engaging with it. With this feature, users can mark specific stories as seen and access information about impressions, reach, and the list of users who have viewed each story.

Mark Seen

The 'markAsSeen()' function in the AmitySDK serves to increase the impression and reach count of specific stories while promptly updating the 'isSeen' state of the story.

C

Amity Social SDK offers the AmityComment data type, which supports two types of content: TEXT and IMAGE. Users can view comments that include text, images, or a combination of both, providing a more versatile and engaging experience for your app's users.

The ability to query comments and their replies is essential for creating a robust and user-friendly commenting experience. By using the getComments() method and passing in the appropriate parameters, you can retrieve the comments and replies that are most relevant to your users.

Comment Replies

The query returns a LiveCollection of all matching comments available. To retrieve replies to a specific comment, you can pass the commentId as the parentId. If you want to retrieve parent-level comments, pass parentId = null. If you omit the parentId, you'll receive all comments on all levels.

Deletion Filter

You can also use the includeDeleted() method to query for deleted comments and their replies. By passing true or false to this method, you can include or exclude deleted comments from the results.

Query Comments with Images

To query for image comments only, you can use the dataTypes parameter and pass the value TEXT , IMAGE, or both. There are two options for the dataTypes parameter: any and exact.

• any - When you use the any option, the retrieved comments will include any comment that contains at least one of the specified data types. For example, if you pass [image, text], the retrieved comments may contain only image content, only text content, or both image and text content.

• exact - On the other hand, when you use the exact option, the retrieved comments will include only comments that contain all of the specified data types. For example, if you pass [image, text], the retrieved comments must contain both image and text content. If you pass [image], the retrieved comments must contain only image content.

Get Story Target

The 'getStoryTarget()' function in the AmitySDK enables real-time observation of StoryTarget based on specified target. This function returns a LiveObject of StoryTarget, enabling users to receive updates and check whether the target possesses unseen stories.

This function requires two parameters: targetType, targetId.

Here's an explanation of the function parameters:

• targetType: Represents the type of target, currently supporting 'community.'

• targetId: Corresponds to the ID of the designated target.

The Amity SDK provides a functionality that allows you to work with social features in your application, including the ability to retrieve a comment. In this section, we'll explore how to use the Amity SDK to retrieve a single comment from your application. By using a specific function provided by the SDK, you can retrieve a comment based on its ID, which provides a convenient way to access specific comment data. The retrieved result is returned as a live object of a comment. For more information on live objects, please refer to .

To retrieve multiple comments, you can use getCommentByIds method provided by CommentRepository. This method accepts a collection of commentId as a parameter and returns a ofAmityComment.

Comment refers to a user-generated response or reaction to a specific piece of content, such as a post or a content. Comments enable users to engage in conversations and express their thoughts, opinions, and emotions about the content they see. They provide a way for users to interact with each other and create a sense of community around the content. Commenting is an essential feature for social platforms as it encourages user engagement, helps create a more immersive experience for users, and can be used to generate insights into user behavior and preferences. In a social SDK product, the SDK provides the necessary tools and functionality for developers to integrate commenting into their apps or websites.

Furthermore, a comment supports real-time events and Live Object features, for more information please refer to and .

Comment Reference Type

Incorporating comment reference types within your app enhances user engagement and promotes interaction, as it allows users to comment on both regular posts and content-specific posts. By differentiating between these two comment types, your app can provide a more organized and contextual commenting experience, catering to the diverse needs of your users and the content they interact with. Comment's referenceType can be:

1. post type comment: A post type comment is designed for regular posts, such as text updates, photos, or videos shared by users. These comments are associated with the regular post and are displayed beneath it, facilitating conversation and interaction.

2. Content type comment: A content type comment, on the other hand, is intended for content-specific posts, such as articles, or other specialized content.

Comment Repository

The functionality of comments can be utilized through the Comment Repository, which offers methods for interacting with a data source that stores posts. This includes methods for querying comments, creating a new comment, updating an existing comment, or deleting a comment.

Comment Description

Amity Social SDK's comment creation is designed to handle comments in a fast and reliable way throughout your application. Each comment is given a unique commentId that cannot be changed, and the SDK includes an optimistic update feature. To work with comments, you'll need to use the CommentRepository.

With the SDK's optimistic creation feature for comments, you don't need to create a unique commentId yourself. Instead, the SDK generates one automatically for you. However, you'll need to provide a referenceId and referenceType. This feature allows the app to display the comment optimistically, assuming that it will be added successfully. This improves the user experience by reducing perceived latency.

Create Comment with Image

Amity Social SDK also allows you to create comments with images. When creating a comment with images, you can use the SDK's optimistic creation feature just like with text comments. The SDK will automatically generate a unique commentId for the image comment. However, in addition to the referenceId and referenceType, you'll also need to provide the image data in the form of fileId.

Reply to a Comment

In addition to creating top-level comments, Amity Social SDK also allows you to reply to existing comments. To reply to a comment, you'll need to specify the parent comment's commentId as one of the parameters. This allows the SDK to associate the new comment as a reply to the parent comment.

Similar to creating a top-level comment, you can use the SDK's optimistic creation feature to create a reply comment. You don't need to provide a unique commentId for the reply comment, as the SDK generates one automatically. Instead, you'll need to provide the parentId, referenceId, referenceType, and the text content of the reply.

Reply Comments with Image

The myReactions property allows users to retrieve a list of all reactions they have made on a particular comment. This feature makes it easy for users to keep track of their own reactions and to see how their engagement with the post has evolved over time.

The reactions property, on the other hand, provides a list of all reactions made on the post. This includes reactions made by other users, providing a broader perspective on the post's overall engagement and sentiment.

Finally, the reactionsCount property provides a simple way to get the total count of reactions on a comment. By using this property, users can quickly see how popular a post is and how engaged the community is with the content.

The SDK provides functionality for soft and hard deleting comments. Soft delete marks the comment as deleted while still keeping it in the system with the isDeleted flag set to true. On the other hand, hard delete completely removes the comment data, including its reactions and replies, from the system.

The need for soft and hard delete functions arises when users want to manage the comments on their app. Soft delete is helpful in situations where the comment has been flagged and needs to be hidden from users without actually deleting the comment. Hard delete, on the other hand, is useful in cases where the comment content is inappropriate and must be permanently deleted from the app.

To hard delete a comment, you can use the AmityCommentRepository, which provides a deleteComment method. When using this method, you need to pass the commentId and a boolean hardDelete parameter. Set the boolean parameter to true for hard delete and false for soft delete. If you do not specify the boolean parameter, it will be set to false by default, equivalent to a soft delete. It's important to note that hard deleting children comments will not delete the parent comment.

It's worth mentioning that hard deleting posts and comments is only supported via SDK, with UIKit and Console support potentially being added in the future. By implementing the soft and hard delete features provided by Social SDK, you can give your app's users more control over the comments they interact with while maintaining a safe and appropriate community.

Flag

The Social SDK product also includes a flag method that allows users to flag comments in their app. Once a comment is flagged, an indicator will appear in the Admin console, where an administrator can review and validate the flag. If the content is found to be in violation of your app's policies, it can be deleted from the app. On the other hand, if the content is not found to be in violation, the flag can be revoked.

The flag method provides an essential tool for managing user-generated content in your app, ensuring that inappropriate comments can be quickly identified and removed. By integrating this method into your app's user interface, you can empower your users to take an active role in promoting a safe and respectful community.

Unflag

Another useful feature is the unflag method, which enables users to revoke a previously flagged comment. If a user flags a comment by mistake or if the comment is found not to violate your app's policies after review, the unflag method can be used to remove the flag from the comment. It ensures that users have control over the content they flag and the ability to reverse their flag if necessary.

Check for isFlaggedByMe

The isFlaggedByMe method allows users to check whether they have previously flagged a particular comment. This method provides a convenient way for users to keep track of the content they have flagged and to ensure that they are staying up-to-date with their moderation activities.

By using the isFlaggedByMe method, your app's users can quickly determine whether they have already flagged a particular comment and avoid duplicating their efforts.

Mentions allow users to tag other users in comments. It's a powerful tool for fostering engagement and collaboration within your social application. With mentions, users can easily notify specific individuals or groups to new content or important updates. In the SDK, mentions can be implemented in a range of ways, depending on your application's needs and user experience. For more information about mentions, please refer to .

Create Comment with Mentions

You can easily mention users when creating a comment by including their user IDs in the mention user parameter as well as defining metadata for mention rendering. For further explanation, please refer to .

Update Comment with Mentions

We provide developers with an efficient method for updating comments with mentions of specific users, you can easily add mentions to their post updates and but it will not notify the relevant users.

To remove mentions you can provide an empty JSON object for the metadata parameter, and an empty list for the mention users parameter. By doing so, You can easily remove mentions from the post content, while ensuring that the overall structure of the post remains intact.:

Render Mentions

In our previous implementation of our global feed, we rank posts in chronological order. This means that newer posts will rank higher than older ones, thus, the former will show up higher in the feed. While this is not a bad algorithm, other factors should also be considered to determine the posts’ ranking in the global feed.

With our new custom post ranking algorithm, we are using a smarter ranking in our global feed that supports a score-sorting mechanism. We focus on what we consider as “meaningful interactions”. This means that, aside from the post’s submission time, we also factor in user engagements, i.e., posts with more comments and reactions will have a higher ranking. In addition, we factor in the updates and edits done to the post.

How it Works

The post will be ranked according to these factors:

• Engagement rate Posts with more comments and reactions will show up higher than posts with less

• Time of posting Newer posts will show up higher than older posts. Time decay is applied where the score will decrease as the post gets older.

• Updates Post updates and edits on a post will give the post a score boost. Updates may also include new comments and reactions.

Posts will be ranked using mathematical formulas with the following properties in the post model as variables:

• commentsCount - number of comments to the post

• reactionsCount - number of reactions to the post

• createdAt - date/time the post was created

• updatedAt - date/time the post was updated

• editedAt - date/time the post was edited

High engagement rate has a big impact on the ranking. A comment will score twice as much as a reaction. A post’s score will decrease as time goes by. However, updating or editing the post bumps up the score.

The score of each post is calculated for every query. This means that when users want to go to the next page, the score will be recalculated.

How to Configure Ranking

If you want to configure the ranking logic to include more factors such as post type, post creator, etc., you may contact Amity Social Cloud Support to review the ranking logic and apply it to the code accordingly.

In our next implementation phase, we will add ranking configurations in ASC Console so users can update ranking logic without the need to call support.

Limitations

Please note however that our custom post ranking implementation has some limitations currently such as:

• While your newly created posts will be immediately available in your User Feed, due to the nature of the ranking algorithm, there may be a momentary delay before it appears on the Global Feed.

• Updating the ranking formula can't be done via ASC console. Please contact Amity Social Cloud Support for the formula validation and applying your ranking logic to the network.

• You can only see up to 20 posts from each user or community that you are following in the global feed.

• Old post data will not be migrated, thus, only the posts that are posted using version 5.10 will show in the global feed.

Implementation

For more information on how to implement custom post ranking in your global feed, see our documentation here.

We also provide UI Kit guides for custom post ranking for iOS and Android.

The SDK provides two ways for users to retrieve their global feed: the getGlobalFeed method and the getCustomPostRanking method. By providing these two distinct ways to retrieve the global feed, the SDK enables users to customize their content experience to better reflect their interests and preferences. This can help to foster a more dynamic and engaging community experience, promoting greater engagement and participation among users.

Conventional Global Feed Query

We provide a simple way to query posts on Global Feed using the getGlobalFeed method. When using this method, posts will be returned in chronological order by default, allowing users to quickly and easily view the most recent content.

Custom Post Ranking Query

Query custom post ranking is a smarter global feed that supports the score-sorting mechanism. The score-sorting mechanism ensures that the posts are presented in order of relevance, with the most engaging and relevant content at the top of the feed. Refer toCustom Post Ranking for more information about this feature. You can use getCustomRankingGlobalFeed to retrieve posts from this functionality.

Users can retrieve information about the community, such as the community name, description, and member count, without actually becoming a member of the community. This provides a way for users to explore their community options and find the communities that are most relevant and engaging to them.

To fetch a community's data without joining, users can simply call the getCommunity method within the SDK and provide the relevant parameter, such as the community ID. The retrieved result is returned as a live object of a post. For more information on live objects, please refer to Live Objects/Collections.

Our SDK provides a convenient way to create a new community on our platform, with several parameters available to customize the community.

• displayName - allows users to set the public display name of the community, which will be visible to other users who can access the community.

• description - allows users to provide a description of the community, which can help other users understand the purpose and focus of the community.

• isPublic - is used to specify the type of the community. Setting it to false will create a private community, while setting it to true will create a public community.

• postSettings - allows users to customize the community post settings. This parameter can be used to configure how posts are moderated within the community, depending on the specific needs and preferences of the community creator.

• storySettings - allows users to customize the community story settings. This parameter can be used to configure whether to enable comment interaction on stories.

• metaData - allows users to include additional properties to support custom fields within the community. This can be useful for creating communities with specific requirements or features that are not available by default in our platform.