Searching for Message

Feature Description

Local message search is a feature essential for the application's improved user experience. It allows users to quickly and conveniently find the expected information from massive amounts of complex data. It can also be used as an operations tool to easily and efficiently navigate to extensive content.
Note:
Only local messages can be searched for, for example, received messages or historical messages obtained after the API is called.
The local message search feature is only available on the IM Ultimate edition. To use it, purchase the Ultimate edition. For more information, see Pricing.

Message Search Class

Message search parameter class

The message search parameter class is V2TimMessageSearchParam (Details). When searching for messages, the SDK will execute different search logics based on the object settings.
The V2TIMMessageSearchParam parameters are as described below:
Parameter
Description
Description
keywordList
Keyword list
It can contain up to five keywords. When the message sender and the message type are not specified, the keyword list must be set; in other cases, it can be left empty.
keywordListMatchType
Match type of the keyword list
It can be set to OR or AND. Valid values: V2TIM_KEYWORD_LIST_MATCH_TYPE_OR (default), V2TIM_KEYWORD_LIST_MATCH_TYPE_AND.
senderUserIDList
userID who sent messages
It can contain up to five user IDs.
messageTypeList
Set of the message types to be searched for
If it is left empty, messages of all the supported types (excluding V2TIMFaceElem and V2TIMGroupTipsElem) will be searched for. For more information on the values of other types, see V2TIMElemType (Details).
conversationID
Whether to search all the conversations or the specified conversation
If it is left empty, all the conversations will be searched; otherwise, the specified conversation will be searched.
searchTimePosition
Start time for the search
It is 0 by default, indicating to search from the current time point. It is a UTC timestamp in seconds.
searchTimePeriod
A past period of time starting from the start time
It is 0 by default, indicating not to limit the time range. It is in seconds. 24x60x60 represents a past day.
pageIndex
Page number
It is used to display the search result by page. 0 indicates the first page.
pageSize
Number of result items per page
It is used to display the search result by page. Set it to 0 if you don't want paged display. If too many result items are pulled at a time, a performance problem may occur.

Message search result class

The message search result class is V2TIMMessageSearchResult (Details). The parameters are as described below:
Parameter
Definition
Description
totalCount
Total number of the search result items
If the specified conversation is searched, the total number of messages that meet the search criteria will be returned.
If all the conversations are searched, the total number of the conversations to which messages that meet the search criteria belong will be returned.
messageSearchResultItems
Match type of the keyword list
If the specified conversation is searched, only the result items in the conversation will be included in the returned result list.
If all the conversations are searched, messages that meet the search criteria will be grouped by conversation ID and returned by page.
Here, messageSearchResultItems is a list that contains the V2TIMMessageSearchResultItem objects (Details). The parameters are as described below:
Parameter
Definition
Description
conversationID
Conversation ID
messageCount
Number of messages
Number of messages that meet the search criteria and are found in the current conversation.
messageList
List of messages that meet the search criteria
If the specified conversation is searched, messageList is the list of messages in the conversation that meet the search criteria.
If all the conversations are searched, messageList may display either of the following results:
If the number of matched messages in a conversation is greater than 1, messageList is empty, and you can display "{messageCount} relevant records" on the UI.
If the number of matched messages in a conversation is equal to 1, messageList is the matched message, and you can display it on the UI and highlight the matched keyword.

Searching for the Messages in All the Conversations

When a user enters a keyword in the search box to search for messages, you can call searchLocalMessages (Details) to search for local messages of the IM SDK.
If you want to search for all the conversations, you only need to leave conversationID in V2TIMMessageSearchParam empty (null/nil) or unspecified.
Sample code:
// Search for local messages by keyword
const searchMessage = await messageManager.searchLocalMessages({
keywordList: ["Keyword 1"],
pageIndex: 0,
pageSize: 10,
type: 1,
});

Searching for the Messages in the Specified Conversation

When a user enters a keyword in the search box to search for messages, you can call searchLocalMessages (Details) to search for local messages of the IM SDK.
Sample code:
// Search for local messages by conversation ID and keyword
const searchMessage = await messageManager.searchLocalMessages({
keywordList: ["Keyword 1"],
pageIndex: 0,
pageSize: 10,
type: 1,
conversationID: "conversationID",
});
In general IM chat software, a search UI is usually displayed as follows:
Figure 1. Chat history
Figure 2. More chat history
Figure 3. Messages in the specified conversation









The following describes how to implement the above scenarios through IM SDK's search APIs.

Displaying the latest active conversations

As shown in Figure 1, a list of the latest three conversations to which the messages found belong is displayed at the bottom. The implementation method is as follows:
1. Set the search parameter V2TIMMessageSearchParam.
Set conversationID to null, which indicates to search all the conversations.
Set pageIndex to 0, which indicates the first page of the conversations to which the messages found belong.
Set pageSize to 3, which indicates the number of the latest conversations to be returned. Generally, the latest three conversations will be displayed on the UI.
2. Process the search callback result V2TIMMessageSearchResult.
totalCount indicates the number of all the conversations to which the matched messages belong.
The messageSearchResultItems list contains the information of the latest three conversations (that is, the pageSize parameter). Here, messageCount of the V2TIMMessageSearchResultItem element indicates the total number of messages found in the current conversation.
If the number of messages found is greater than 1, messageList is empty, and you can display "4 relevant records" on the UI. Here, 4 is messageCount.
If the number of messages found is equal to 1, messageList is the matched message, and you can display it on the UI and highlight the search keyword, for example, "test" in the above figure.
Sample code:
// Search for messages of a specified type through `messageTypeList`
const searchMessage = await messageManager.searchLocalMessages({
keywordList: ["Keyword 1"],
pageIndex: 0,
pageSize: 10,
type: 1,
conversationID: "",
messageTypeList: [MessageElemType.V2TIM_ELEM_TYPE_TEXT],
});

Searching for a Custom Message

In general, if you call the createCustomMessage(data) API (Details) to create a custom message, the message cannot be found, as the SDK will save it as a binary data stream.
To enable a user to find a custom message, you need to call the createCustomMessage(data, description, extension) API TS to create and send the custom message and put the text to be searched for in the description parameter.
If you have configured the offline push feature, after the description parameter is set, the custom message will be pushed offline, and the parameter content will be displayed on the notification bar. If you don't need offline push, you can use the disablePush in the V2TIMOfflinePushInfo parameter of the sendMessage API (Details).
If you don't want to display the content pushed on the notification bar as the text to be searched for, you can use desc in the V2TIMOfflinePushInfo parameter to set the push content.

Searching for a Rich Media Message

Rich media messages include file, image, audio, and video messages.
For a file message, the filename is usually displayed on the UI. If you pass in the fileName parameter when calling createFileMessage to create a file message, fileName will be used as the content to be searched for and match the search keyword. If fileName is not set, the SDK will automatically extract the filename from filePath as the content to be searched for. Both fileName and filePath will be saved in the local database and on the server, which can be searched for after being pulled on another device.
For image, audio, and video messages, there is no such name as fileName, and a thumbnail or duration is usually displayed on the UI; in this case, keywordList is invalid. To enable a user to find such messages, you can specify messageTypeList as V2TIM_ELEM_TYPE_IMAGE/V2TIM_ELEM_TYPE_SOUND/V2TIM_ELEM_TYPE_VIDEO for categorized search.