Are you looking to build a WhatsApp messenger clone in React? With Amity Social Cloud React UI Kit, you can create a tailored in-app chat experience with highly customizable UI components. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through step-by-step instructions on how to build a WhatsApp clone in React. From understanding the components provided by UI Kit to creating a feature-rich WhatsApp-style chat implementation, you’ll have everything you need to build a WhatsApp messenger clone. So, let’s get started!
Pre-requisites
Before you start building your WhatsApp messenger clone, you’ll need to have the following:
- An Amity Social Cloud Portal account
- An Amity Social Cloud Console Account
- A UI or access to Amity Social Cloud React UI Kit
- A React application
Note: If you haven’t already registered for an Amity account, we recommend following our comprehensive step-by-step guide in the Amity Portal to create your new network.
Step 1: Create an Application in the Amity Portal
The first step is to create an application in the Amity portal. This will give you access to everything provided in your chat service. Once an application is created, you will need to save the API Key that will appear in your console, to initialize the React Chat SDK in your React application.
Step 2: Install the Amity React UI Kit
Once you have your application set up, you can install our React Chat UI Kit. This will enable you to build a tailored chat experience with highly customizable UI components.
Step 3: Import the Necessary Components
Once UIKit is installed, you can import the necessary components for your application from UIKit. For our example, we will use the <span id="greylight" class="greylight">AmityUiKitProvider</span> and <span id="greylight" class="greylight">AmityUiKitSocial</span> modules. With these modules, we’ll create a mobile and desktop view. The mobile view will render either the recent chats or both the chat room and settings menu together. For the desktop view, we will have the recent chats and chat room side by side.
Step 4: Create a General Wrapper
To start, we will use the <span id="greylight" class="greylight">AmityUiKitProvider</span> as a general wrapper for the multiple modules we will include in our application. This will allow us to check for the window’s screen size and render either the mobile or desktop view.
Step 5: Create the Mobile and Desktop Views
We’ll create two components and name them MobileView and DesktopView. Both of these components will contain our modules. The mobile view will render either the recent chats or both the chat room and settings menu together. For the desktop view, we will have the recent chats and chat room side by side.
Step 6: Initialize the Chat SDK
Finally, we’ll need to initialize the React Chat SDK in our React application. This will allow us to connect to the Amity Social Cloud server and start using the chat features.
Final Thoughts
Congratulations! You have now built a WhatsApp messenger clone in React. You have a functional WhatsApp-styled messaging implementation composed of core components and modules from the Amity Social Cloud UI Kit. From here, you will be able to build your chat experience with the essential elements to fit your application’s needs.
Please view this sample code in our web sample application for an overview of what we have walked through. For more information, you can also check out our docs or explore the wealth of UIKit tutorials on our developer portal. Check out the community forum or contact us if you need help with the Amity UI Kit. Our experts are always ready to help!