Azure Communication Chat (Java)

Build real-time chat applications with thread management, messaging, participants, and read receipts.

Privacy and write scope

Examples are independent SDK fragments, not a complete tested application. Pin the package version and verify imports/API signatures against it before compiling. Use approved test participants and a least-privilege user token; sending messages, read receipts or typing events, changing history visibility and deleting threads require the corresponding user instruction. Minimize pagination and do not print production message bodies, tokens or participant identifiers into shared logs. Render received HTML only with an appropriate sanitizer; server acceptance does not make it safe UI markup.

Installation

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.azure</groupId>
    <artifactId>azure-communication-chat</artifactId>
    <version>1.6.0</version>
</dependency>

Client Creation

import com.azure.communication.chat.ChatClient;
import com.azure.communication.chat.ChatClientBuilder;
import com.azure.communication.chat.ChatThreadClient;
import com.azure.communication.common.CommunicationTokenCredential;

// ChatClient requires a CommunicationTokenCredential (user access token)
String endpoint = "https://<resource>.communication.azure.com";
String userAccessToken = "<user-access-token>";

CommunicationTokenCredential credential = new CommunicationTokenCredential(userAccessToken);

ChatClient chatClient = new ChatClientBuilder()
    .endpoint(endpoint)
    .credential(credential)
    .buildClient();

// Async client
ChatAsyncClient chatAsyncClient = new ChatClientBuilder()
    .endpoint(endpoint)
    .credential(credential)
    .buildAsyncClient();

Key Concepts

Create Chat Thread

import com.azure.communication.chat.models.*;
import com.azure.communication.common.CommunicationUserIdentifier;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

// Define participants
List<ChatParticipant> participants = new ArrayList<>();

ChatParticipant participant1 = new ChatParticipant()
    .setCommunicationIdentifier(new CommunicationUserIdentifier("<user-id-1>"))
    .setDisplayName("Alice");

ChatParticipant participant2 = new ChatParticipant()
    .setCommunicationIdentifier(new CommunicationUserIdentifier("<user-id-2>"))
    .setDisplayName("Bob");

participants.add(participant1);
participants.add(participant2);

// Create thread
CreateChatThreadOptions options = new CreateChatThreadOptions("Project Discussion")
    .setParticipants(participants);

CreateChatThreadResult result = chatClient.createChatThread(options);
String threadId = result.getChatThread().getId();

// Get thread client for operations
ChatThreadClient threadClient = chatClient.getChatThreadClient(threadId);

Send Messages

// Send text message
SendChatMessageOptions messageOptions = new SendChatMessageOptions()
    .setContent("Hello, team!")
    .setSenderDisplayName("Alice")
    .setType(ChatMessageType.TEXT);

SendChatMessageResult sendResult = threadClient.sendMessage(messageOptions);
String messageId = sendResult.getId();

// Send HTML message
SendChatMessageOptions htmlOptions = new SendChatMessageOptions()
    .setContent("<strong>Important:</strong> Meeting at 3pm")
    .setType(ChatMessageType.HTML);

threadClient.sendMessage(htmlOptions);

Get Messages

import com.azure.core.util.paging.PagedIterable;

// List all messages
PagedIterable<ChatMessage> messages = threadClient.listMessages();

for (ChatMessage message : messages) {
    System.out.println("ID: " + message.getId());
    System.out.println("Type: " + message.getType());
    System.out.println("Content: " + message.getContent().getMessage());
    System.out.println("Sender: " + message.getSenderDisplayName());
    System.out.println("Created: " + message.getCreatedOn());
    
    // Check if edited or deleted
    if (message.getEditedOn() != null) {
        System.out.println("Edited: " + message.getEditedOn());
    }
    if (message.getDeletedOn() != null) {
        System.out.println("Deleted: " + message.getDeletedOn());
    }
}

// Get specific message
ChatMessage message = threadClient.getMessage(messageId);

Update and Delete Messages

// Update message
UpdateChatMessageOptions updateOptions = new UpdateChatMessageOptions()
    .setContent("Updated message content");

threadClient.updateMessage(messageId, updateOptions);

// Delete message
threadClient.deleteMessage(messageId);

Manage Participants

// List participants
PagedIterable<ChatParticip