PHP Real-time Chat Message Read and Unread Status Flag Implementation Tutorial

PHP Real-time Chat Message Read and Unread Status Flag Implementation Tutorial

In modern social apps and websites, real-time chat has become an essential feature. When developing this functionality, an important feature is being able to mark messages as read or unread, so users can easily see which messages have been read. This article will guide you through how to implement this in PHP using MySQL.

Database Design

To implement the message read and unread status functionality, we need to create two tables in the database: one for users and another for messages.

Creating the Users Table

CREATE TABLE users (
    id INT(11) AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    username VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);

Creating the Messages Table

CREATE TABLE messages (
    id INT(11) AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    sender_id INT(11) NOT NULL,
    receiver_id INT(11) NOT NULL,
    message TEXT,
    is_read TINYINT(1) DEFAULT 0
);

In the database design above, the `users` table stores user ID and username, while the `messages` table contains message ID, sender ID, receiver ID, message content, and the read status.

Implementing Message Read and Unread Status Flags

Next, we will look at some example code to demonstrate how to handle the read and unread status of messages.

Fetching the User List

<?php
// Connect to the database
$connection = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'username', 'password', 'database_name');
// Fetch the list of users
$query = mysqli_query($connection, "SELECT * FROM users");
$users = mysqli_fetch_all($query, MYSQLI_ASSOC);

Loading Chat Messages

<?php
// Fetch the current user ID
$user_id = $_SESSION['user_id'];

// Fetch unread messages
$query = mysqli_query($connection, "SELECT * FROM messages WHERE receiver_id = '$user_id' AND is_read = 0");
$unread_messages = mysqli_fetch_all($query, MYSQLI_ASSOC);

// Mark unread messages as read
foreach ($unread_messages as $message) {
    $message_id = $message['id'];
    mysqli_query($connection, "UPDATE messages SET is_read = 1 WHERE id = '$message_id'");
}

// Fetch read messages
$query = mysqli_query($connection, "SELECT * FROM messages WHERE receiver_id = '$user_id' AND is_read = 1");
$read_messages = mysqli_fetch_all($query, MYSQLI_ASSOC);

Displaying Messages

<?php
// Display unread messages
foreach ($unread_messages as $message) {
    echo "<div class='unread-message'>{$message['message']}</div>";
}

// Display read messages
foreach ($read_messages as $message) {
    echo "<div class='read-message'>{$message['message']}</div>";
}

In the code above, we first connect to the database and fetch all unread messages for the current user. We then update these unread messages to mark them as read, and finally display both the unread and read messages.

Summary

In this tutorial, we successfully implemented message read and unread status flags for PHP real-time chat. As your requirements evolve, you can enhance this functionality further, such as by adding message notifications or delivery receipts.

This concludes the tutorial on PHP development of message read and unread status flags for real-time chat functionality. We hope it helps with your development work!