User Profile Integration

The LiveLike profile system can be used to handle a variety of scenarios, ranging from local anonymous experiences to persistent integration with existing user account systems. You can read more about those use cases in the profiles product guide.

Initializing the SDK

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Warning

Creating new profiles again may result in higher than expected MAU(Monthly Active User) count which can effect billing.

The LiveLike initializer returns a promise that resolves a profile object. Unless an access token is provided, those calls to init will resolve a new profile each time. This may be appropriate for one-off micro experiences, but usually an integration would persist the profile so that it is re-used the next time the SDK is initialized. Here is an example of how this might be managed in a purely client-side integration:

We also recommend that you initialize the SDK as late as possible in your application - just before the user accesses the EngagementSDK features.

if (alreadySavedAccessToken()) {
  // Already saved an access token: re-use it!
  const profile = await LiveLike.init({
    clientId,
    accessToken: loadSavedAccessToken()
  });
} else {
  // No saved access token yet, save it for next time
  const profile = await LiveLike.init({ clientId })
  saveAccessToken(profile.access_token)
}

The alreadySavedAccessToken, loadSavedAccessToken and saveAccessToken functions are just placeholders, you can imagine they might store the access token in local storage to be re-used later. A more complex integration might save and load them from your user account service on the backend, for example.

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Initialization will create a profile if an access token is not provided

Take note that the init method will create a new profile if an accessToken option is not provided and already existing profile data is not available in localStorage. This can result in duplicate profiles being created if not managed carefully.

Reusing an Existing Profile

If you already have an access token for a LiveLike profile, you can pass it into the init function as accessToken. This will load the user profile associated with that access token. This is common when LiveLike access tokens are being stored your own user account records in your backend.

const existingProfile = await LiveLike.init({
  accessToken,
  clientId
})

Updating a Profile

To modify an existing user profile, use the LiveLike.updateUserProfile method. Providing a nickname property in the options argument will update the name shown for future chat messages sent by that profile.

const updatedProfile = await LiveLike.updateUserProfile({
	accessToken,
  options: {
    nickname: 'New Nickname'
  }
})

The updateProfile function will return a promise which resolves the updated user profile object. This profile object does not contain the access token, so it is important to save it before running this function.

Creating a New Profile

You can create a profile manually at any time using LiveLike.createUserProfile. Even if the SDK has already been initialized, a new profile will be returned.

const newProfile = await LiveLike.createUserProfile({ nickname: 'New Nickname' })