Manage the user-channel membership relationship

Requires App Context

To set up and manage channel membership, you must enable App Context for your app's keyset in the Admin Portal.

When a user joins a channel or gets invited to it, a membership relationship between that user and the channel is created (Membership entity). The membership ends when this user leaves the channel.

Read on to learn how to check and update user-channel membership.

Get membership

There are two GetMemberships() methods that return a wrapper containing a list of all channel memberships of a given user.

Both of these methods give the same output. The only difference is that you call a given method either on the User or the Channel object.

To get a list of all existing channels, use the GetChannels() method.

Method signature

This method takes the following parameters:

• GetMemberships() (on the User object)

  user.GetMemberships(
      string filter = "",
      string sort = "",
      int limit = 0,
      Page page = null
  )

• GetUserMemberships() (on the Chat object)

  chat.GetUserMemberships(
      string userId,
      string filter = "",
      string sort = "",
      int limit = 0,
      Page page = null
  )

• GetMemberships() (on the Channel object)

  channel.GetMemberships(
      string filter = "",
      string sort = "",
      int limit = 0,
      Page page = null
  )

• GetChannelMemberships() (on the Chat object)

  chat.GetChannelMemberships(
      string channelId,
      string filter = "",
      string sort = "",
      int limit = 0,
      Page page = null
  )

Input

Parameter	Type	Required for GetMemberships() on User	Required for GetUserMemberships() on Chat	Required for GetMemberships() on Channel	Required for GetChannelMemberships() on Chat	Default	Description
userId	string	Yes	No	No	No	n/a	ID of the user for which you want to retrieve memberships.
channelId	string	No	No	Yes	No	n/a	ID of the channel for which you want to retrieve memberships.
filter	string	No	No	No	No	empty string	Expression used to filter the results. Returns only these memberships whose properties satisfy the given expression. The filter language is defined here.
sort	string	No	No	No	No	empty string	Key-value pair of a property to sort by, and a sort direction. Available options are id, name, and updated. Use asc or desc to specify the sorting direction, or specify null to take the default sorting direction (ascending). For example: {name: "asc"}. By default, the items are sorted by the last updated date.
limit	int	No	No	No	No	0	Number of objects to return in response.
page	Page	No	No	No	No	null	Object used for pagination to define which previous or next result page you want to fetch.

Output

Type	Description
MembersResponseWrapper	An object containing the filtered, sorted, and paginated list of memberships.

Basic usage

Find out which channels the support_agent_15 user is a member of.

• GetMemberships() (on the User object)

  if (chat.TryGetUser("support_agent_15", out var user))
  {
      Console.WriteLine($"Found user with name {user.Name}");
      
      // Get the memberships of the user
      var memberships = user.GetMemberships();
  
      Console.WriteLine($"Memberships of user {user.Name}:");
  
      foreach (var membership in memberships.Memberships)
      {
          Console.WriteLine($"Channel ID: {membership.ChannelId}");
      }
  }
  else

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• GetUserMemberships() (on the Chat object)

  var userId = "support_agent_15";
  
  // Get the memberships of the user
  var memberships = chat.GetUserMemberships(userId);
  
  Console.WriteLine($"Memberships of user with ID {userId}:");
  
  foreach (var membership in memberships.Memberships)
  {
      Console.WriteLine($"Channel ID: {membership.ChannelId}");
  }

• GetMemberships() (on the Channel object)

  var userId = "support_agent_15";
  var channelName = "support";
  
  // retrieve the channel details
  if (chat.TryGetChannel(channelName, out var channel))
  {
      Console.WriteLine($"Found channel with name {channel.Name}");
  
      // get the memberships of the channel
      var memberships = channel.GetMemberships();
  
      Console.WriteLine($"Memberships for channel {channel.Name}:");
  
      // loop through the memberships to find the user's membership
      foreach (var membership in memberships)

  show all 26 lines

• GetChannelMemberships() (on the Chat object)

  var userId = "support_agent_15";
  var channelId = "support";
  
  // Get the memberships of the channel using the Chat object
  var memberships = chat.GetChannelMemberships(channelId);
  
  Console.WriteLine($"Memberships for channel with ID {channelId}:");
  
  // Loop through the memberships to find the user's membership
  foreach (var membership in memberships.Memberships)
  {
      if (membership.UserId == userId)
      {
          Console.WriteLine($"User {userId} is a member of channel with ID {channelId}.");
      }

  show all 20 lines

Get updates

These methods let you receive updates when specific user-channel Membership objects are added, edited, or removed on other clients:

• StartListeningForUpdates() — listen for Membership object update information.
• OnMembershipUpdated — add a single event handler to a single Membership object update.
• AddListenerToMembershipsUpdate() — add a single event handler to each Membership object update from the provided list.

Method signature

These methods take the following parameters:

• StartListeningForUpdates()

  channel.StartListeningForUpdates()

• OnMembershipUpdated

  // event on the Membership entity
  Action<Membership> OnMembershipUpdated;
  // needs a corresponding event handler
  void EventHandler(Membership membership)

• AddListenerToMembershipsUpdate()

  chat.AddListenerToMembershipsUpdate(
      List<string> membershipIds, 
      Action<Membership> listener
  )

Input

Parameter	Type	Required in StartListeningForUpdates	Required in OnMembershipUpdated	Required in AddListenerToMembershipsUpdate()	Default	Description
membership	Membership	No	Yes	No	n/a	The membership object to handle the update event for.
membershipIds	List<string>	No	No	Yes	n/a	List of memberships for which you want to get updates.
listener	n/a	No	Yes	Yes	n/a	The definition of the custom behavior to be executed when detecting membership changes.

Output

These operations don't return any data.

Basic usage

Get updates on the first user membership.

• StartListeningForUpdates() and OnMembershipUpdated

  // reference the "support_agent_15" user
  if (chat.TryGetUser("support_agent_15", out var user))
  {
      Console.WriteLine($"Found user with name {user.Name}");
      
      // get the list of all user memberships
      var membershipsResponse = user.GetMemberships();
      
      // extract the actual memberships from the response
      var memberships = membershipsResponse.Memberships;
      
      if (memberships.Any())
      {
          // get the first membership
          var firstMembership = memberships.First();

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Get updates on the first page of user memberships.

• AddListenerToMembershipsUpdate()

  // reference the "support_agent_15" user
  if (chat.TryGetUser("support_agent_15", out var user))
  {
      Console.WriteLine($"Found user with name {user.Name}");
      
      // get the first page of user memberships
      var membershipsResponse = user.GetMemberships();
  
      // extract the actual memberships from the response
      var memberships = membershipsResponse?.Memberships;
      
      if (memberships != null && memberships.Any())
      {
          // get the IDs of the memberships from the first page
          List<string> membershipIds = memberships.Select(m => m.Id).ToList();

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Update

Update() updates the channel membership information for a given user.

Method signature

This method takes the following parameters:

membership.Update(string customJsonObject)

Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
customJsonObject	string	Yes	n/a	Any custom properties or metadata associated with the channel-user membership.

Output

This method doesn't return any data.

Basic usage

Assign the premium-support role to support_agent_15 on the high-priority-incidents channel.

// reference the "support_agent_15" user
if (!chat.TryGetUser("support_agent_15", out var user))
{
    Console.WriteLine("Couldn't find user!");
    return;
};

// get the list of all user memberships and filter out the right channel
var membershipsWrapper = user.GetMemberships(
    filter: "channel.Id == 'high-priority-incidents'"
);

if(membershipsWrapper.Memberships.Any())
{
    // add custom metadata to the user membership

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