forever-chat-format

Forever Chat Format

Why

Because in the world where our communication is siloed into Google Hangouts, Facebook, iMessage, WhatsApp, etc etc it's getting hard to hold onto conversations for archival purposes. First thing we need is a universal format that we can export those proprietary chats into that's easy to understand, and that can be relied upon.

Basic Format

Output should be an array of hashes, and each object in the array is a JSON object defined as follows:

Chat Object Definition

Name	Type	Description
sha	string	sha1 of [sender, receiver, date, text, service]
sender	string	The handle of the person sending the message
receiver	string	The handle of the person receiving the message
is_from_me	boolean	true if you sent the message
send_error	boolean	true if the message didn't send
date	ISO-8601 datetime	date message was sent/received by sender
service	string	Service message was sent using. All lowercase, dasherized. 'imessage', 'google-hangouts', 'facebook-messenger', 'sms'
date_read	ISO-8601 datetime	(optional) date message was sent/read by receiver
date_delivered	ISO-8601 datetime	(optional) date message was delivered by receiver
participants	array	(see definition below) An array of strings of handles involved in the conversations. Used for grouping. For a two person conversation, this has two entries in it. Sender and receiver are always here.
message_text	string	text representation of the message
message_segments	array	(see definition below) ordered segments of content as it appears in the message
attachments	array	(see definition below) array of attachments
associated_sha	string	sha of message this message is in response to. Generally used for reactions
_debug	object	(optional) debug information to help trace back to the source of the data

Message Segment Definition

Name	Type	Possible Values	Description
type	string	text, link, file	base segment type
file_type	string	null, or a mime_type	only valid when type == file
path	string	url or file path
text	string		the rendered name of the link, or the text content for the text, or optionally

Text Segment

{"type": "text", "text": "Why hello there"}

Link Segment

{"type": "link", "text": "Whoa, unreal", "path": "http://latlmes.com/technology/why-we-need-a-new-chat-format-1"}

File Segment

{"type": "file", "file_type": "image/png", "path": "/path/to/image.png"}

Reaction Segment

{"type": "reaction", "reaction_type": "laughed"}

Attachments

Array of attachments in the order they were received. Each attachment has the following properties. This information should also be made available in message_segments.

Name	Type
path	string
type	string

Usage

The included tests check whether some json is valid forever chat format.

var foreverJson    = importer("test.json"); // done by an exporter
 
var {validate, runTests} = require('forever-chat-format-tests');
 
runTests(foreverJson); // runs mocha tests on data

The last step of your exporter should be to pass your exported data to the prepare function. It will check that the data conforms to the forever-chat-format spec and then return a hash with two keys: messages, and validations. Messages is all the data your exporter returned, and validations are what you see below:

 
"validations": {
  "version":           1.2 // forever chat version
  "checkedCount":      100 // number of records checked
  "errorCount":        0   // number of records with errors
  "recordsWithErrors":
  "ruleResults": { /* each rule keyed by name with errorCount and "erroredRecords" */
    "unique-sha": {
      "description":    "Each record should have a unique sha",
      "errorCount":     0,
      "erroredRecords": []
    }
 
    ...
  }
}

Testing

var foreverJson   = importer("test.json"); // done by an exporter
var {validate, runTests} = require('forever-chat-format-tests');
runTests(foreverJson);