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Change Background of Message Section in SUSI.AI Web Chat

In SUSI.AI Web Chat we pay special attentions to the UI to make it easy to use and attract more users. Many chat apps offer users customization such as changing the colors and background. As this is very popular we decided to give the option to customize the background of message section of SUSI.AI web chat. The UI of the message section had a default gray background which could not be modified by the user. The goal was now to allow the user to customize the look of his or her own client starting with the background of the message section.

We added the settings to change the background image to Custom theme menu which occurs only when the user is logged in.The option looks like this:

User can add URL of any image of his/her choice and it will be set as the background of message section.
Now let’s take a look at the implementation of this option. We added messageBackgroundImage to our state of message section and initialised it to ‘ ’ (empty string). The TextField component looks like this:

<TextField
   name="messageImg"
   style={{display:component.component==='body'?'block':'none'}}
   ref={(input) => { this.backImage = input }}
   onChange={
     (e,value)=>
     this.handleChangeMessageBackground(value) }
    value={this.state.messageBackgroundImage}
    floatingLabelText="Message Background Image URL"
 />

OnChange method handles the input URL and this calls the function handleChangeMessageBackground. This function is having following implementation:

handleChangeMessageBackground(backImage){
    this.setState({messageBackgroundImage:backImage});
  }

It sets the messageBackgroundImage equal to the URL entered by the user. Now to change the background of message section we made a custom React style object messageBackgroundStyles:

const messageBackgroundStyles = {
        backgroundImage: `url(${this.state.messageBackgroundImage})`,
        backgroundRepeat: 'no-repeat',
        backgroundSize: '100% 100%'
    }

In the above object,

backgroundImage: sets the message section background to the image on URL entered by user

backgroundImage: Does not allows to the image to be repeated.

backgroundSize: Fills the entire message section with the background image.

Now this style was added to the component of message section :

<div className='message-section'>
     <ul
      className='message-list'
      ref={(c) => { this.messageList = c; }}
      style={messageBackgroundStyles}> // Styles added
       // Some relevant code    
      </ul>
</div>

Now we have following UI, where the user can modify the message section background with image of his or her own choice. User can add any image as background of message section by adding appropriate URL. The image will cover the entire message section without repeating itself.

Background Image source:link

This gives our user custom look according to his/her own choice.

Resources

Testing Link

http://chat.susi.ai

Background Image source of featured image : link

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