Real-time events API
Zulip's real-time events API lets you write software that reacts
immediately to events happening in Zulip. This API is what powers the
real-time updates in the Zulip web and mobile apps. As a result, the
events available via this API cover all changes to data displayed in
the Zulip product, from new messages to stream descriptions to
emoji reactions to changes in user or organization-level settings.
Using the events API
The simplest way to use Zulip's real-time events API is by using
call_on_each_event from our Python bindings. You just need to write
a Python function (in the examples below, the lambdas) and pass it
into call_on_each_event; your function will be called whenever a new
event matching the specified parameters (event_types, narrow,
etc.) occurs in Zulip.
call_on_each_event takes care of all the potentially tricky details
of long-polling, error handling, exponential backoff in retries, etc.
It's cousin, call_on_each_message, provides an even simpler
interface for processing Zulip messages.
More complex applications (like a Zulip terminal client) may need to
instead use the raw register and
events endpoints.
Usage examples
#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import zulip
# Pass the path to your zuliprc file here.
client = zulip.Client(config_file="~/zuliprc")
# Print every message the current user would receive
# This is a blocking call that will run forever
client.call_on_each_message(lambda msg: sys.stdout.write(str(msg) + "\n"))
# Print every event relevant to the user
# This is a blocking call that will run forever
client.call_on_each_event(lambda event: sys.stdout.write(str(event) + "\n"))
Parameters
You may also pass in the following keyword arguments to call_on_each_event:
event_types (string)[] optional
Example: ["message"]
A JSON-encoded array indicating which types of events you're interested
in. Values that you might find useful include:
- message (messages)
- subscription (changes in your subscriptions)
- realm_user (changes to users in the organization and
their properties, such as their name).
If you do not specify this parameter, you will receive all
events, and have to filter out the events not relevant to
your client in your client code. For most applications, one
is only interested in messages, so one specifies:
event_types=['message']
Event types not supported by the server are ignored, in order to simplify
the implementation of client apps that support multiple server versions.
narrow ((string)[])[] optional
Example: [["stream", "Denmark"]]
A JSON-encoded array of arrays of length 2 indicating the
narrow filter(s) for which you'd
like to receive events for.
For example, to receive events for private messages (including
group private messages) received by the user, one can use
narrow=[["is", "private"]].
Unlike the API for fetching messages,
this narrow parameter is simply a filter on messages that the
user receives through their stream subscriptions (or because
they are a recipient of a private message).
This means that a client that requests a narrow filter of
[["stream", "Denmark"]] will receive events for new messages
sent to that stream while the user is subscribed to that
stream. The client will not receive any message events at all
if the user is not subscribed to "Denmark".
Newly created bot users are not usually subscribed to any
streams, so bots using this API need to be
subscribed to any streams whose messages
you'd like them to process using this endpoint.
See the all_public_streams parameter for how to process all
public stream messages in an organization.
Defaults to [].
all_public_streams boolean optional
Example: true
Whether you would like to request message events from all public
streams. Useful for workflow bots that you'd like to see all new messages
sent to public streams. (You can also subscribe the user to private streams).
Defaults to false.
See the GET /events documentation for
more details on the format of individual events.