Chat Authentication

Chat authentication is handled by the underlying Pub/Sub SDK. You authenticate an Ably Realtime client, then pass that authenticated client into ChatClient.

Authentication Flow

1. Your auth server authenticates the user
2. Your auth server issues an Ably-compatible token (JWT format is recommended for most apps)
3. The client SDK fetches tokens with authCallback and refreshes them automatically before expiry
4. The authenticated Pub/Sub client is passed into ChatClient

Server Setup

Create an endpoint that validates user-provided credentials and returns JWTs with the appropriate Chat capabilities:

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Client Setup

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Chat Capabilities

Capabilities are permissions that control what operations a client can perform:

Feature	Required Capabilities
Send messages	publish
Receive messages	subscribe
Update messages	message-update-any or message-update-own
Delete messages	message-delete-any or message-delete-own
Message history	subscribe, history
Message reactions	annotation-publish, optionally annotation-subscribe
Presence	subscribe, presence
Typing indicators	publish, subscribe
Room reactions	publish, subscribe
Occupancy	subscribe, channel-metadata

Room-scoped Capabilities

You can scope capabilities to specific rooms, a namespace of rooms, or all rooms:

• my-chat-room - a specific room
• dms:* - all rooms in the dms: namespace
• * - all chat rooms

Next Steps

• Learn about connections
• Start building with rooms
• Explore message features