List all channels

getChannels() returns a paginated list of all existing channels.

By default, this method returns all custom channel metadata without the need to explicitly define that during the call.

Requires App Context

To store data about channels, you must enable App Context for your app's keyset in the Admin Portal.

If you have Access Manager enabled in your app, uncheck the Disallow Get All Channel Metadata option in the App Context configuration in the Admin Portal – this way you can get metadata of all channels without the need to define that in the permissions schema included in the authentication token.

To get a list of all channels a user is a member of, use the getMemberships() method.

Method signature

Under the hood

This method takes the following parameters:

chat.getChannels({
    filter?: string,
    sort?: object,
    limit?: number,
    page?: {
        next?: string,
        prev?: string
    }
}): Promise<{
    channels: Channel[],
    page: {
        next: string,
        prev: string,
    },
    total: number,

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Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
filter	string	No	n/a	Expression used to filter the results. Returns only these channels whose properties satisfy the given expression are returned. The filtering language is defined here.
sort	object	No	n/a	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	number	No	100	Number of objects to return in response. The default (and maximum) value is 100.
page	object	No	n/a	Object used for pagination to define which previous or next result page you want to fetch.
→ next	string	No	n/a	Random string returned from the server, indicating a specific position in a data set. Used for forward pagination, it fetches the next page, allowing you to continue from where you left off.
→ prev	string	No	n/a	Random string returned from the server, indicating a specific position in a data set. Used for backward pagination, it fetches the previous page, enabling access to earlier data. Ignored if the next parameter is supplied.

Output

Parameter	Type	Description
Promise<>	object	Returned object containing three fields: channels, page, and total.
→ channels	Channel[]	List of all matching channels.
→ page	object	Object that lets you either fetch the next (next) or previous (prev) result page.
→ next	string	Random string returned from the server, indicating a specific position in a data set. Used for forward pagination, it fetches the next page, allowing you to continue from where you left off.
→ prev	string	Random string returned from the server, indicating a specific position in a data set. Used for backward pagination, it fetches the previous page, enabling access to earlier data. Ignored if the next parameter is supplied.
→ total	number	Total number of Channel objects matching the request query.

Basic usage

Fetch all existing channel IDs.

// reference the "chat" object and invoke the "getChannels()" method
const channels = await chat.getChannels()

Other examples

Pagination

Get the number of 25 channels and then specify that you want to fetch the results from the next page using a string previously returned from the PubNub server.

// result page 1
const channelsObject = await chat.getChannels(
    {
        limit: 25,
    }
)

// result page 2
const channelsObjectPage2 = await chat.getChannels(
    {
        limit: 25,
        page: { next: channelsObject.page.next } 
    }
)

Archived channels

Get all archived channels. This request will return all channels removed with the soft option set to true, whose data is still stored in the App Context storage.

const channels = await chat.getChannels(
    {
        filter: "status=='deleted'"
    }
)