Building a Social Network with SwiftUI – Part 3 (Group Channels)

Part three of the series focuses on integrating group chat functionality into a social application using Stream Chat, building on prior work outlined in parts one and two. The process involves enhancing the iOS application by adding a ChannelsView to the TabView, allowing users to create and join chat channels. The backend already provides the necessary infrastructure to generate frontend tokens for Stream Chat, facilitating direct API communication. Users can navigate through a list of channels, create new channels by providing a name, and interact with the Stream API to broadcast messages to all channel participants. The app utilizes Stream's Swift libraries to handle API communications and UI rendering, including a UIViewController for displaying a list of channels and enabling group chat interaction. Once a channel is selected, Stream's library automatically manages the display and functionality of the group chat interface, resulting in a comprehensive chat feature within the social network application.