Presence Update: 3 New Features

We’re excited to announce that today we’re launching a major upgrade to our Presence Feature. This update includes performance improvements for existing functionality as well as introducing three new features including:

Custom User State

Now you can set custom key / value data per user or device to track custom states or other user data such as age, gender, or location. We’ve provided simple APIs to set and query this information

Subscribe with State data on a User / Channel

Update State data on a User / Channel

Get all State data on a User / Channel

Global Here_Now

Previously our here_now() function was specific to a given PubNub channel. We’ve updated this function so that you can now make one call and see all users present across all channels.

Where_Now

This new function allows developers to quickly determine all of the channels to which a given user or device is connected.

Additional Resources

The updated Presence functionality is entirely backward compatible with existing client SDKs. However, in order to take advantage of the new functions described above you will need to upgrade to the latest 3.6 clients available on our Developer’s Page. For launch we have updated our Java, JavaScript, Android and iOS libraries to 3.6. We will be updating other SDKs in the coming weeks.

You can also find full API documentation and tutorials for the new features here.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback about this update feel free to contact us at support@pubnub.com.