When integrating a messaging platform, you need to handle read and unread status at two distinct levels:

• Message read status — tracking when the account owner has read someone else’s message, so indicators like the double blue check appear at the correct time for the recipient(s).
• Chat read status — maintaining the overall chat state (read/unread) across devices in real-time, to ensuring consistent organization and accurate indicators.

Read messages

To mark messages from other users as read by the account owner, use the Read a Message endpoint, specifying the ID of the message.

👍

Recommendations

For your integration to conform to a natural behavior, we recommend marking messages as read before replying to them.

❗️

Provider limitations

This functionality is not available on Recruiter nor Sales navigator as there are no read receipts.

await messagingApi.readMessage({
  path: {
    account_id: "acc_123456789",
    chat_id: "chat_id",
    message_id: "message_id",
  },
});

messaging_api.read_message(
    "chat_id",
    "message_id",
    "acc_123456789",
)

curl --request POST \
     --url https://api.unipile.com/v2/account_id/chats/chat_id/messages/message_id/read \
     --header 'accept: application/json'

Read a chat

When you receive messages in a chat, the unread_count (green badge in native apps) is automatically increased, and is_unread is set to true if there is at least one unread message.

To mark a chat as read (reset the unread_count and is_unread), use the Update a Chat endpoint and set read_status to true.

await messagingApi.updateChat({
  path: {
    account_id: "acc_123456789",
    chat_id: "chat_id",
  },
  body: {
    read_status: true,
  },
});

messaging_api.update_chat(
    "chat_id",
    "acc_123456789",
    {"read_status": True},
)

curl --request PATCH \
     --url https://api.unipile.com/v2/account_id/chats/chat_id \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '{"read_status":true}'

👍

Recommendation

When marking a chat as read on LinkedIn Classic, also mark all unread messages within it as read to maintain consistent behavior in your integration. This is not done automatically.

You can determine which messages are unread by using the unread_count property or by tracking a “last read” timestamp.

For more details on marking messages as read, see the Read messages section of this guide.

Mark a chat as unread

To force a chat to be marked as unread, use the Update a Chat endpoint and set read_status to false.

await messagingApi.updateChat({
  path: {
    account_id: "acc_123456789",
    chat_id: "chat_id",
  },
  body: {
    read_status: false,
  },
});

messaging_api.update_chat(
    "chat_id",
    "acc_123456789",
    {"read_status": False},
)