Best Practices for handling dynamic data in custom messages (e.g. polls)

[ondrejkorol]

Hello! I recently began working with the Stream Chat iOS SwiftUI SDK, and I must say, it's fantastic—great job! I have a general question regarding the handling of dynamic data and custom messages.

I aim to create polls as custom messages, allowing users to vote and view real-time results. My initial strategy involves creating a custom attachment type with the following structure:

• type: "poll"
• PollAttachmentPayload containing properties like (for example) id: String, title: String?, options: [..], and votes: [..]

However, I'm unsure about the best practice for storing votes and other dynamic data (e.g., an editable title). Should I store this information within the attachment.payload or the message.extraData? It appears that editing the attachment payload is not possible once it has been sent. If that's the case, I assume I should use a custom attachment primarily to differentiate the message view and store unchangeable properties (e.g., the poll's ID), while keeping the rest of the information in the message extra data dictionary, which can be easily edited.

Is my understanding correct, or would you recommend a different approach?

[martinmitrevski]

Hi @ondrejkorol,

Thanks for the kind words, we're glad that you like our SDK!

About your question: the approach you suggested makes sense, since now we only support editing the message's extra data. We also plan to allow editing attachments in the future (most likely in Q2), but I think the current state also fits your use-case, so you can get started with it.

We are also looking into exposing our own polls component, but that will most likely come end of Q2/start of Q3. Let us know how your implementation goes and if you have any other questions.

[ondrejkorol]

Thanks, Martin!
That all sounds great! In that case, I'll start with the custom attachment and extraData for editable properties.
I'll share my progress:)