Broadcast

Send and receive messages using Realtime Broadcast

Let's explore how to implement Realtime Broadcast to send messages between clients.

Usage#

You can use the Supabase client libraries to send and receive Broadcast messages.

Initialize the client#

Go to your Supabase project's API Settings and grab the URL and anon public API key.

import { createClient } from '@supabase/supabase-js'

const SUPABASE_URL = 'https://<project>.supabase.co'
const SUPABASE_KEY = '<your-anon-key>'

const client = createClient(SUPABASE_URL, SUPABASE_KEY)

Listening to Broadcast messages#

You can provide a callback for the broadcast channel to receive message. In this example we will receive any broadcast messages in room-1:

// Join a room/topic. Can be anything except for 'realtime'.
const channelA = clientA.channel('room-1')

// Simple function to log any messages we receive
function messageReceived(payload) {
  console.log(payload)
}

// Subscribe to the Channel
channelA
  .on(
    'broadcast',
    { event: 'test' },
    (payload) => messageReceived(payload)
  )
  .subscribe()

Sending Broadcast messages#

We can send Broadcast messages using channelB.send(). Let's set up another client to send messages.

// Join a room/topic. Can be anything except for 'realtime'.
const channelB = clientA.channel('room-1')

channelB.subscribe((status) => {
  // Wait for successful connection
  if (status !== 'SUBSCRIBED') {
    return null
  }

  // Send a message once the client is subscribed
  channelB.send({
    type: 'broadcast',
    event: 'test',
    payload: { message: 'hello, world' },
  })
})

Before sending messages we need to ensure the client is connected, which we have done within the subscribe() callback.

Broadcast options#

You can pass configuration options while initializing the Supabase Client.

Self-send messages#

By default, broadcast messages are only sent to other clients. You can broadcast messages back to the sender by setting Broadcast's self parameter to true.

const myChannel = supabase.channel('room-2', {
  config: {
    broadcast: { self: true },
  },
})

myChannel.on(
  'broadcast',
  { event: 'test-my-messages' },
  (payload) => console.log(payload)
)

myChannel.subscribe((status) => {
  if (status !== 'SUBSCRIBED') { return }
  channelC.send({
    type: 'broadcast',
    event: 'test-my-messages',
    payload: { message: 'talking to myself' },
  })
})

Acknowledge messages#

You can confirm that Realtime received your message by setting Broadcast's ack config to true.

const myChannel = clientD.channel('room-3', {
  config: {
    broadcast: { ack: true },
  },
})

myChannel.subscribe(async (status) => {
  if (status !== 'SUBSCRIBED') { return }

  const serverResponse = await myChannel.send({
    type: 'broadcast',
    event: 'acknowledge',
    payload: {},
  })

  console.log('serverResponse', serverResponse)
})

Use this to guarantee that the server has received the message before resolving channelD.send's promise. If the ack config is not set to true when creating the channel, the promise returned by channelD.send will resolve immediately.

Send messages using REST calls#

note

This is currently available only in the Supabase JavaScript client version 2.37.0 and later.

You can also send a Broadcast message by making an HTTP request to Realtime servers. This is useful when you want to send messages from your server or client without having to first establish a WebSocket connection.

const channel = client.channel('test-channel')

// No need to subscribe to channel

channel
.send({
type: 'broadcast',
event: 'test',
payload: { message: 'Hi' },
})
.then((resp) => console.log(resp))

// Remember to clean up the channel

client.removeChannel(channel)

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