Migrating from react-native-gifted-chat

@kesha-antonov/react-native-chat is a rebranded continuation of react-native-gifted-chat (RNGC), built from its latest master. The API, props, and IMessage data model are unchanged - migrating is a package swap plus a find-and-replace of the GiftedChat* names. There are no prop renames and no behavior changes.

Coming from an older RNGC version? You also pick up everything that landed in RNGC master (animated day header, swipe-to-reply, quick replies, emoji reactions, link parsing, …) plus this fork's streaming support.

1. Swap the package

# yarn
yarn remove react-native-gifted-chat
yarn add @kesha-antonov/react-native-chat

# npm
npm uninstall react-native-gifted-chat
npm install @kesha-antonov/react-native-chat

Peer dependencies are the same as RNGC, so nothing else to install: react-native-gesture-handler, react-native-reanimated, react-native-safe-area-context, react-native-keyboard-controller.

2. Rename the imports / identifiers

react-native-gifted-chat	@kesha-antonov/react-native-chat
react-native-gifted-chat (package)	@kesha-antonov/react-native-chat
GiftedChat (component + .append / .prepend)	Chat
GiftedAvatar	ChatAvatar
GiftedChatContext	ChatContext
GiftedChatProps (type)	ChatProps
IGiftedChatContext (type)	IChatContext
useChatContext	useChatContext (unchanged)
IMessage, User, Reply, QuickReplies, …	unchanged

Before

import { GiftedChat, IMessage } from 'react-native-gifted-chat'

const onSend = useCallback((msgs: IMessage[] = []) => {
  setMessages(prev => GiftedChat.append(prev, msgs))
}, [])

return <GiftedChat messages={messages} onSend={onSend} user={{ _id: 1 }} />

After

import { Chat, IMessage } from '@kesha-antonov/react-native-chat'

const onSend = useCallback((msgs: IMessage[] = []) => {
  setMessages(prev => Chat.append(prev, msgs))
}, [])

return <Chat messages={messages} onSend={onSend} user={{ _id: 1 }} />

Codemod (one-shot find-and-replace)

Run this from your project root against your source directory. Order matters - the compound names must be replaced before the shorter GiftedChat:

grep -rlZ --include='*.ts' --include='*.tsx' --include='*.js' --include='*.jsx' \
  react-native-gifted-chat src \
| xargs -0 perl -pi -e '
  s/\bIGiftedChatContext\b/IChatContext/g;
  s/\bGiftedChatContext\b/ChatContext/g;
  s/\bGiftedChatProps\b/ChatProps/g;
  s/\bGiftedAvatarProps\b/ChatAvatarProps/g;
  s/\bGiftedAvatar\b/ChatAvatar/g;
  s/\bGiftedChat\b/Chat/g;
  s#react-native-gifted-chat#\@kesha-antonov/react-native-chat#g;
'

Then review the diff and run your type-checker / lint.

3. Everything else stays the same

• All <Chat> props are identical to <GiftedChat> (same names, same render overrides, same messages / onSend / user shape).
• The IMessage model is unchanged. New optional fields - reactions and streaming - are additive and don't affect existing code.
• The package now publishes compiled output (lib/) with type declarations. This is transparent for normal imports (import { Chat } from '@kesha-antonov/react-native-chat'); only deep imports into internal src/... paths (which were never public) would break.

What's new beyond RNGC

The one capability not in RNGC is streaming (AI) messages - token-by-token replies for AI/chatbot UIs (useStreamingMessages, a blinking StreamingCursor, Chat.updateMessage). See docs/STREAMING.md.