Hermes

A fully featured messaging package for Laravel 4, 5 and 5.1.

You can have conversations between multiple users to build a messenger with rooms or just a private 1to1 message system.

The Idea

• Conversation -> hasMany Users
• Conversation -> hasMany Messages
• Message -> hasOne User
• Message -> hasMany MessageState
• MessageState -> hasMany User

Like you see in the table above, Hermes is able to differ between different users when it comes to reading a message.

For example:

There is a conversation between 3 users: User1, User2 and User3.

User1 writes a message and User2 reads it.

Then we have three MessageStates for this new message:

• MessageState for User1 is ‘own’
• MessageState for User2 is ‘read’
• MessageState for User3 is ‘unread’

##Install

Step 1: Composer.json

For Laravel 5

    "require": {
        ...
        "triggerdesign/hermes": "2.*"
        }

For Laravel 4

    "require": {
        ...
        "triggerdesign/hermes": "1.0"
        }

Run a composer update.

Step 2: app.php

	'providers' => array(
	    ...
        \Triggerdesign\Hermes\HermesServiceProvider::class
	);
	...
	'aliases' => array(
	    ...
        'Messaging' => Triggerdesign\Hermes\Facades\Messaging::class
   );

Step 3: Publish migrations and config

    php artisan vendor:publish
    php artisan migrate

Now you have the 4 tables that we need for user conversations.

Step 4: Use the user trait

You should use a trait inside your User model:

<?php

use Triggerdesign\Hermes\Models\UserTrait as HermesTrait;
...

class User extends BaseModel implements ConfideUserInterface
{
    use HermesTrait;
    ...

Usage

Start a new conversation or find an existing one

Start a converstion between user with the ID 1 and the user with the ID 2. If there is allready one it will return the existing conversation.

    //This will start a new conversation between user 1 and 2 or find an existing one
    $conversation = Messaging::startConversation([1,2]);
    
    //or try to find one on your own
    $conversation =  Messagging::findConversations($user_ids, $arguments, $limit);

Now you have access to these functions and attributes:

    //All messages in one conversation
    $conversation->messages;
    
    //Add a message
    $conversation->addMessage($content);
    
    $conversation->addUser($user);
    
    $conversation->latestMessage();
    $conversation->unreadMessages();
    
    $conversation->isUnread(); //conversation has unread messages
    $conversation->doRead(); //call this after a user has read his messages

You can also have groups of messages like in facebook. Several messages are collected into a group of messages, if they is not too much time in between and if they are all from one sender.

    //Build an array of \Triggerdesign\Hermes\Classes\MessageGroup
    $messageGroups = $conversation->buildGroups();
    
    ...
    
    //now you can iterate throgh these groups and buld your own messenger
    @foreach($messageGroups as $messageGroup)
        <b>{{ $messageGroup->getUser()->name }}: @ {{ $messageGroup->getStart()->format('d.m.Y H:i:s');  }}</b>
        @foreach($messageGroup->getMessages() as $message)
            <p>{{ nl2br($message->content)  }}</p>
        @endforeach
    @endforeach
    

Access the conversations of a user

The trait allows you to use these functions:

	//All conversations that this user is a member of
	$user->conversations(); 
	
	//How many messages are unread
	$user->unreadMessagesCount();
	$user->hasUnreadMessages();
	
	//Get all unread conversations
	$user->unreadConversations();
	
	//Get all unread conversations inside all the unread conversations
	$user->unreadMessages();

Configuration

The configuration files are published into your app directory.

• If you dont use the "users" table for storing your users you can rename it in hermes.usersTable
• Change the tableprefix if you want to: hermes.tablePrefix