Tencent is the earliest and biggest instant messaging developer in China. QQ and WeChat, both developed by Tencent, have become indispensable apps for every Internet user. In conformity with the trend of industrial digital transformation, Tencent now shares its high-concurrency and highly reliable instant messaging capabilities as SDKs and RESTful APIs and launches the Tencent Cloud Chat. You can integrate the Chat SDKs provided by Tencent Cloud into your apps in a simple way. By calling RESTful APIs on the server side, you can easily have the same powerful instant communication capabilities as those of Weixin and QQ. The following figure shows the interaction between the Chat service and your apps.
For developer requirements and scenarios in different phases, the Tencent Cloud Chat team provides a series of solutions, including the Android, iOS, Windows, and web SDK components, as well as capabilities for integrating RESTful APIs and Webhooks on the server. With these components and capabilities, developers can construct reliable and stable instant messaging products for free and global communication.
Architecture
Tencent Cloud Chat features a comprehensive suite of solutions including global access, one-to-one chat, group chat, message push, profile and contacts hosting, and account authentication. It also provides complete app access and backend management APIs.
Services
Access service
The access service provides Chat with highly interconnected, reliable, and secure global network connection channels and proprietary multi-level optimal addressing algorithms to implement scheduling across private and public networks. Technologies including intelligent compatibility for passing through gateway policies, persistent connection multiplexing, transport-layer protocol optimization, and channel encryption allow businesses to establish simple and reliable communication with business backends without concerns about network details.
When terminals log in, the Chat SDK connects to the nearest access nodes. Chat access nodes include the following:
China: South China, North China, East China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Other regions:
Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, UAE, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Philippines.
Europe: United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, France and Spain.
South America: Brazil.
North America: United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Oceania: Australia.
Africa: South Africa and Nigeria.
Data storage sites
Chat provides Southeast Asia (Singapore), Northeast Asia (Seoul, South Korea), Europe (Frankfurt, Germany), and North America (Silicon Valley, USA) Data Centers for selection. Your business stores data in the Data Center selected when you Create Application, and each Data Center supports global access.
One-to-one chat
One-to-one chat supports various message types including text, emojis, locations, images, audio, short video, and custom message. It provides special features such as red packets, chatbots, read receipt, and message recall as well as services such as offline messages and roaming messages. For more information, see One-to-One Messages.
Group chat
A group chat involves multiple participants. Chat supports the following five group types based on group joining and organization management methods to meet the requirements of different group chat scenarios.
A work group (Work) is like an ordinary Weixin group. After a work group is created, a user can only join the group by being invited by a friend who is a member of the group. The invitation does not need to be accepted by the invitee or approved by the group owner.
A public group (Public) is like a QQ group. After a public group is created, the group owner can designate group admins. To join the group, a user needs to search for the group ID and send a request, and the request needs to be approved by the group owner or an admin before the user can join the group.
Meeting group (Meeting): Allows users to join and leave freely and view historical messages sent before they join the group. Meeting groups are ideal for scenarios that integrate Tencent Real-Time Communication (TRTC), such as audio/video conferencing and online education.
Audio-video group (AVChatRoom): Allows users to join and exit freely, supports an unlimited number of members, and does not store message history. Audio-video groups can be used with Cloud Streaming Services (CSS) to support on-screen comment chat scenarios.
Community group (Community): Allows users to join and exit freely and is ideal for ultra-large community group chat scenarios, such as knowledge sharing and game communication.
Note
Community is supported only in native SDK 5.8.1668 enhanced edition or later and web SDK 2.17.0 or later. You need to purchase the Premium edition and activate it in Console > Feature Configuration > Group configuration > Group feature configuration > Community.
Groups are highly customizable, supporting custom group types, group fields, group member fields, group IDs, and webhook events. You can fully customize your group based on the needs of your app. For more information, see Group System.
Caution
Although audio-video groups (AVChatRoom) support unlimited group members, if a spike in group members is expected within a short time (in scenarios such as large online events where the number of members in a single group reaches 50,000 or above), contact us or sales representatives in advance and report service resource usage by providing the SDKAppID and the scheduled event time.
Profile and contacts hosting
Chat provides a holistic solution for profile and contacts management, storing user profiles (for example, nicknames, profile photos, and custom profile fields), contacts, blocklists, and other information. Chat's profile and contacts hosting service provides a backup service with up to 12 copies and multi-data center remote deployment to improve service quality and disaster recovery performance. For more information, see Profile Management and Relationship Chain Management.
Account authentication
Data security is ensured with asymmetric encryption ECDSA-SHA256 and hash encryption HMAC-SHA256 (HMAC-SHA256 is recommended). Developers can directly use the app’s own account to quickly integrate Chat services, freeing themselves from tedious account mapping work. With simple SDK integration and convenient API calls, it is easy to authenticate user accounts (UserID) and passwords (UserSig). For more information, see Login Authentication.
Management and Monitoring
In addition to basic instant messaging features, Chat provides a convenient and easy-to-use console, which allows you to create apps, download Chat SDKs, query app configurations, perform joint app testing, and integrate instant messaging capabilities. Chat console also supports various features such as backend message delivery, group management, and statistics. For more information, see Console Guide.
Advanced Features
RESTful APIs
RESTful APIs are HTTP management APIs that provide the app backend with a management entry at the backend. For the list of RESTful APIs currently supported by Chat, see RESTful API Overview.
In addition to RESTful APIs, Chat Console also provides simple features such as data management and one-to-one and one-to-many messaging. Developers can manage, view, and test data in Chat Console. In contrast, RESTful APIs are less user-friendly, but they can provide more powerful management capabilities.
Webhooks
When Chat initiates a webhook, it sends requests to the app backend before or after an event. Then, the app backend synchronizes data accordingly or intervenes in the subsequent processing of the event.
Chat provides a diverse set of webhook events, which are free of charge. For more information, see the Webhook Command List.
Private Deployment
Private deployment allows an enterprise to deploy systems directly to its own servers and save data locally. Chat provides the private deployment feature to assist enterprises in the deployment, implementation, and OPS of the private version. If needed, please apply for the Chat private service.
Note
To apply for the Chat private service, you need to log in with your root account of Tencent Cloud.
Security and Compliance
Compliance is the foundation for the development of Tencent Cloud Chat, which meets the compliance requirements of different countries and industries. In addition to ensuring the security, compliance, availability, confidentiality, and privacy of the services it provides, Chat also provides relevant support for its customers to meet their and their customers' compliance requirements, reduce repeated investment in audit work, and improve auditing and management efficiency.
Tencent Cloud Chat has passed SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 audits, meets the requirements of China's Cybersecurity Classified Protection 2.0 (Level 3), and is certified to ISO 9001, ISO 20000, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, ISO 27701, ISO 29151, CSA STAR, NIST CSF, BS 10012, and K-ISMS.
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