This article has been updated to recommend our new Android Chat SDK, designed specifically to create chat applications with Kotlin. The Android Chat SDK allows you to implement features like group / 1:1 messaging, threads, reactions, unread message indicators, & typing indicators quickly and easily.
Mobile chat applications are an effective way to create digital environments where people and devices worldwide can easily collaborate, and exchange information in real time. The world’s most popular operating system powering these devices is Android, an open-source mobile platform where developers can create various applications for phones, watches, televisions, and cars. Google originally developed the Android platform in 2008 and currently powers more than 2.5 billion devices worldwide.
Among the most popular mobile apps used by devices are chat applications. Users depend on social applications such as WhatsApp, Snapchat, Messenger, Discord, Zoom, and Slack to interact with others across the world with text messages, SMS messages, and video calls, all in real time. In an ever-increasing need for virtual spaces, professionals, students, and everyday users need to stay connected to their school, business, healthcare, friends, and families no matter where they are in the world.
Why build chat applications in Android
Android is an open-source mobile platform, allowing the advancement of more feature-rich devices and applications:
Manufacturers other than Google can produce phones that rely on the Android operating system, allowing for a lot of variety in the market.
Developers can experiment with different Android functionality that suits their application needs and collaborate with others on GitHub to continue developing new features.
Consumers can purchase competitively priced phones that allow them flexibility based on their budget.
Google offers developer resources that allow developers to fully experiment with Android functionality, with most features being initially free when getting started. Sync up with Google services, such as Firebase, to store, manage, perform authentication requests, and send mobile push notifications to your devices via Firebase Cloud Messaging. Google Maps provides a Map API to add GPS functionality to your application. Google Play allows you to distribute your application. Host in-app services such as purchases, news updates, social features, accessibility functions, analytics, and more. There is a plethora of learning resources available offered by both Google and community members that guides users through integrating these services into their applications.
How to build Android chat applications
To begin building your chat application in Android, download Android Studio, the official Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Android app development.
Once you’ve downloaded the latest version of Android Studio, create a project that targets the platform of choice (like: React Native, React.js or Node.js). You can run emulated environments of various devices, including mobile phones, tablets, watches, televisions, and cars. You’ll need to then select your language of choice. Android offers two languages, Java and Kotlin. While Java has been the standard of Android development for many years, Android now recommends using Kotlin to build your Android applications, as it provides more stability and feature-rich language features in Android apps.
Give your Android application a package name and press the create button to initialize your new messaging app and begin development in the MainActivity class.
Follow Android’s getting started guides and integrate Google services to solve common problems for your Android app by following along with Google’s Codelabs Tutorials.
Be sure to also take advantage of toolkits such as Jetpack Compose, the recommended toolkit for building native UI efficiently, by using the androidx namespace (instead of historically using XML to layout the UI), Be sure to also install any community-recommended plugins to aid in your development process.
As you build your live chat software, you’ll need to keep in mind the different types of interactions and features your users require. Users will want to be able to join different servers or organizations that are uniquely created for their hobbies or professional use. They will want to be able to collaborate on different channels or topics, as well as be able to have group chats or even 1:1 conversations with friends and coworkers in private chat rooms. Users should be able to access a member list that shows if their friends or channel members are online. When typing messages, users should be able to see when others are typing or responding and allow for message reactions and emoji support to keep conversations lively. Mobile push notifications should be used to alert users of new messages at the top of the screen and in the app icon or widget from other users while they are elsewhere in the chat app, the chat app is in the background, or have completely closed the application.
Powering these features requires setting up infrastructure to handle user communication, detect online presence, load messages, and scale securely, along with building the UI for your chat app. Building this yourself is possible but time-consuming and resource-intensive. This is where PubNub can help.
Getting Started with PubNub for your Android chat app
PubNub is a developer API platform that enables applications to receive real-time updates at a massive, global scale. PubNub serves as the foundation for over 2000 customers in diverse industries. Developers can depend on PubNub’s scalability and reliability to power chat features for their applications by making use of different chat SDKs. PubNub is efficient, reliable, and fast enough to power these features in real-time chat applications, without affecting the user experience.
PubNub has the following features built-in to its API and can meet the specific needs of your application.
Publish: Send messages whenever user input is updated, such as text updates, emoji reactions, sent files, and other complex metadata.
Subscribe: Receive new messages to refresh users' screens.
Presence: Update and detect the online status of users.
Message Persistence: Display any received messages once users login to the app or track project and document revisions.
Mobile Push Notifications: Notify mobile users who are away from the app about any chat messages, project updates, or application updates.
App Context: Store information about your user in one place without the need of setting up or calling your database.
Access Manager: Restrict access for private conversations, channel rooms, documents, and projects for specific users.
Functions: Translate messages, censor inappropriate messages, announce the arrival of new users, and notify other users of mentions.
Events & Actions: Centrally manage events in your application’s ecosystem and trigger business logic with no code.
To begin using PubNub to power your Android real-time chat app, you’ll need to first create a PubNub account and download PubNub’s Android Chat SDK. The SDK integrates seamlessly into your application and allows you to connect to PubNub’s real-time communication platform.
Sign in or create an account to create an app on the Admin Portal and get the keys to use in your application. Learn how to do so by following this how-to on creating keys.
Download the Android SDK by following the instructions in the documentation to install any necessary PubNub dependencies for your messaging app.
Follow the SDK’s getting started documentation to configure your keys in the
build.gradlefile and begin implementing the features to drive your chat functionality.
To learn more: Please see our documentation for the Android Chat SDK that includes a getting started guide
Android instant messaging examples
Android communication apps that contain in-app messaging such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Snapchat, Discord, and Slack use their own implementation of these features in their apps to create unique experiences for users. However, with PubNub, companies don’t have to set up the infrastructure that needs to reliably scale and minimize latency, no matter the size of its users.
NurseGrid, an app for nursing departments to manage and share schedules in real time, uses PubNub for real-time updates, mobile push notifications, and in-app messaging to reduce scheduling inefficiencies.
Josh Talks, an English learning platform in India, uses PubNub to power direct and group chat at scale, as well as mobile push notifications, increasing time spent in-app and customer retention. With over five million downloads in the Play Store, PubNub eliminates concurrency and latency issues the developers of Josh Talks were facing and helps optimize the platform to better serve users across different locations, languages, and devices in real time.
vFairs is a virtual events platform that allows companies and organizations of any size to create engaging, seamless remote experiences that connect people globally, whether for an audience of 50 or 30,000. vFairs uses PubNub to provide reliable and scalable in-app chat in real time to these audience members and has saved 75% in developer time by moving from their in-house chat to PubNub.
If you would like more personal assistance, please reach out to us. We’ll walk you through the best way to add PubNub to your Android chat application.
