Fetch a single message
GET https://math187awinter2024.zulipchat.com/api/v1/messages/{message_id}
Given a message ID, return the message object.
Additionally, a raw_content
field is included. This field is
useful for clients that primarily work with HTML-rendered
messages but might need to occasionally fetch the message's
raw Markdown (e.g. for view
source or
prefilling a message edit textarea).
Changes: Before Zulip 5.0 (feature level 120), this
endpoint only returned the raw_content
field.
Usage examples
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import zulip
# Pass the path to your zuliprc file here.
client = zulip.Client(config_file="~/zuliprc")
# Get the raw content of a message given the message's ID.
result = client.get_raw_message(message_id)
print(result)
curl -sSX GET -G https://math187awinter2024.zulipchat.com/api/v1/messages/43 \
-u BOT_EMAIL_ADDRESS:BOT_API_KEY \
--data-urlencode apply_markdown=false
Parameters
message_id integer required in path
Example: 43
apply_markdown boolean optional
Example: false
If true
, message content is returned in the rendered HTML
format. If false
, message content is returned in the raw
Markdown-format text that user entered.
Changes: New in Zulip 5.0 (feature level 120).
Defaults to true
.
Response
Return values
-
raw_content
: string
The raw Markdown content of the message.
Deprecated and to be removed once no longer required for
legacy clients. Modern clients should prefer passing
"apply_markdown": false
to request raw message content.
-
message
: object
An object containing details of the message.
Changes: New in Zulip 5.0 (feature level 120).
-
avatar_url
: string | null
The URL of the message sender's avatar. Can be null
only if
the current user has access to the sender's real email address
and client_gravatar
was true
.
If null
, then the sender has not uploaded an avatar in Zulip,
and the client can compute the gravatar URL by hashing the
sender's email address, which corresponds in this case to their
real email address.
Changes: Before Zulip 7.0 (feature level 163), access to a
user's real email address was a realm-level setting. As of this
feature level, email_address_visibility
is a user setting.
-
client
: string
A Zulip "client" string, describing what Zulip client
sent the message.
-
content
: string
The content/body of the message.
-
content_type
: string
The HTTP content_type
for the message content. This
will be text/html
or text/x-markdown
, depending on
whether apply_markdown
was set.
-
display_recipient
: string | (object)[]
Data on the recipient of the message;
either the name of a channel or a dictionary containing basic data on
the users who received the message.
-
edit_history
: (object)[]
An array of objects, with each object documenting the
changes in a previous edit made to the message,
ordered chronologically from most recent to least recent
edit.
Not present if the message has never been edited or if the realm has
disabled viewing of message edit history.
Every object will contain user_id
and timestamp
.
The other fields are optional, and will be present or not
depending on whether the channel, topic, and/or message
content were modified in the edit event. For example, if
only the topic was edited, only prev_topic
and topic
will be present in addition to user_id
and timestamp
.
Changes: In Zulip 10.0 (feature level 284), removed the
prev_rendered_content_version
field as it is an internal
server implementation detail not used by any client.
-
prev_content
: string
Only present if message's content was edited.
The content of the message immediately prior to this
edit event.
-
prev_rendered_content
: string
Only present if message's content was edited.
The rendered HTML representation of prev_content
.
-
prev_stream
: integer
Only present if message's channel was edited.
The channel ID of the message immediately prior to this
edit event.
Changes: New in Zulip 3.0 (feature level 1).
-
prev_topic
: string
Only present if message's topic was edited.
The topic of the message immediately prior to this
edit event.
Changes: New in Zulip 5.0 (feature level 118).
Previously, this field was called prev_subject
;
clients are recommended to rename prev_subject
to
prev_topic
if present for compatibility with
older Zulip servers.
-
stream
: integer
Only present if message's channel was edited.
The ID of the channel containing the message
immediately after this edit event.
Changes: New in Zulip 5.0 (feature level 118).
-
timestamp
: integer
The UNIX timestamp for the edit.
-
topic
: string
Only present if message's topic was edited.
The topic of the message immediately after this edit event.
Changes: New in Zulip 5.0 (feature level 118).
-
user_id
: integer | null
The ID of the user that made the edit.
Will be null
only for edit history
events predating March 2017.
Clients can display edit history events where this
is null
as modified by either the sender (for content
edits) or an unknown user (for topic edits).
-
id
: integer
The unique message ID. Messages should always be
displayed sorted by ID.
-
is_me_message
: boolean
Whether the message is a /me status message
-
last_edit_timestamp
: integer
The UNIX timestamp for when the message was last edited,
in UTC seconds.
Not present if the message has never been edited.
-
reactions
: (object)[]
Data on any reactions to the message.
-
emoji_name
: string
Name of the emoji.
-
emoji_code
: string
A unique identifier, defining the specific emoji codepoint requested,
within the namespace of the reaction_type
.
-
reaction_type
: string
A string indicating the type of emoji. Each emoji reaction_type
has an independent namespace for values of emoji_code
.
Must be one of the following values:
-
unicode_emoji
: In this namespace, emoji_code
will be a
dash-separated hex encoding of the sequence of Unicode codepoints
that define this emoji in the Unicode specification.
-
realm_emoji
: In this namespace, emoji_code
will be the ID of
the uploaded custom emoji.
-
zulip_extra_emoji
: These are special emoji included with Zulip.
In this namespace, emoji_code
will be the name of the emoji (e.g.
"zulip").
-
user_id
: integer
The ID of the user who added the reaction.
Changes: New in Zulip 3.0 (feature level 2). The user
object is deprecated and will be removed in the future.
-
user
: object
Dictionary with data on the user who added the
reaction, including the user ID as the id
field. Note that reactions data received from the
events API has a slightly different
user
dictionary format, with the user ID field
called user_id
instead.
Changes: Deprecated and to be removed in a future release
once core clients have migrated to use the adjacent user_id
field, which was introduced in Zulip 3.0 (feature level 2).
Clients supporting older Zulip server versions should use
the user ID mentioned in the description above as they would
the user_id
field.
-
recipient_id
: integer
A unique ID for the set of users receiving the
message (either a channel or group of users). Useful primarily
for hashing.
-
sender_email
: string
The Zulip API email address of the message's sender.
-
sender_full_name
: string
The full name of the message's sender.
-
sender_id
: integer
The user ID of the message's sender.
-
sender_realm_str
: string
A string identifier for the realm the sender is in. Unique only within
the context of a given Zulip server.
E.g. on example.zulip.com
, this will be example
.
-
stream_id
: integer
Only present for channel messages; the ID of the channel.
-
subject
: string
The topic
of the message. Currently always ""
for direct messages,
though this could change if Zulip adds support for topics in direct
message conversations.
The field name is a legacy holdover from when topics were
called "subjects" and will eventually change.
-
submessages
: (object)[]
Data used for certain experimental Zulip integrations.
-
msg_type
: string
The type of the message.
-
content
: string
The new content of the submessage.
-
message_id
: integer
The ID of the message to which the submessage has been added.
-
sender_id
: integer
The ID of the user who sent the message.
-
id
: integer
The ID of the submessage.
-
timestamp
: integer
The UNIX timestamp for when the message was sent,
in UTC seconds.
-
topic_links
: (object)[]
Data on any links to be included in the topic
line (these are generated by custom linkification
filters that match content in the
message's topic.)
Changes: This field contained a list of urls before
Zulip 4.0 (feature level 46).
New in Zulip 3.0 (feature level 1). Previously, this field was called
subject_links
; clients are recommended to rename subject_links
to topic_links
if present for compatibility with older Zulip servers.
-
type
: string
The type of the message: "stream"
or "private"
.
-
flags
: (string)[]
The user's message flags for the message.
Changes: In Zulip 8.0 (feature level 224), the wildcard_mentioned
flag was deprecated in favor of the stream_wildcard_mentioned
and
topic_wildcard_mentioned
flags. The wildcard_mentioned
flag exists
for backwards compatibility with older clients and equals
stream_wildcard_mentioned || topic_wildcard_mentioned
. Clients
supporting older server versions should treat this field as a previous
name for the stream_wildcard_mentioned
flag as topic wildcard mentions
were not available prior to this feature level.
Example response(s)
Changes: As of Zulip 7.0 (feature level 167), if any
parameters sent in the request are not supported by this
endpoint, a successful JSON response will include an
ignored_parameters_unsupported
array.
A typical successful JSON response may look like:
{
"message": {
"avatar_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6d8cad0fd00256e7b40691d27ddfd466?d=identicon&version=1",
"client": "populate_db",
"content": "<p>Security experts agree that relational algorithms are an interesting new topic in the field of networking, and scholars concur.</p>",
"content_type": "text/html",
"display_recipient": [
{
"email": "hamlet@zulip.com",
"full_name": "King Hamlet",
"id": 4,
"is_mirror_dummy": false
},
{
"email": "iago@zulip.com",
"full_name": "Iago",
"id": 5,
"is_mirror_dummy": false
},
{
"email": "prospero@zulip.com",
"full_name": "Prospero from The Tempest",
"id": 8,
"is_mirror_dummy": false
}
],
"flags": [
"read"
],
"id": 16,
"is_me_message": false,
"reactions": [],
"recipient_id": 27,
"sender_email": "hamlet@zulip.com",
"sender_full_name": "King Hamlet",
"sender_id": 4,
"sender_realm_str": "zulip",
"subject": "",
"submessages": [],
"timestamp": 1527921326,
"topic_links": [],
"type": "private"
},
"msg": "",
"raw_content": "**Don't** forget your towel!",
"result": "success"
}
An example JSON response for when the specified message does not exist or it
is not visible to the user making the query (e.g. it was a direct message
between two other users):
{
"code": "BAD_REQUEST",
"msg": "Invalid message(s)",
"result": "error"
}