Programmatically start chat

[tmyers101]

This is more of a question. Is there a way to programmatically start a chat in the React Chat Widget? I want to start a chat when a user clicks on a button that I created.

[danielahristova]

Has been proposed here #71 , guess it's not a thing yet

[umitalp]

Seems like the it updates the visibility of the widget when the prop is changed here

Maybe changing the visibility prop of the LiveChatWidget will help, something like;

import { FunctionComponent, useState } from 'react';
import { LiveChatWidget, WidgetState, useWidgetIsReady } from '@livechat/widget-react';

const LiveChatWidgetSection: FunctionComponent = () => {
    const isWidgetReady = useWidgetIsReady();
    const [liveChatWidgetVisibility, setLiveChatWidgetVisibility] = useState<WidgetState['visibility']>('hidden');

    if (!isWidgetReady) {
        return null;
    }

    return (
        <>
            <button onClick={() => setLiveChatWidgetVisibility('maximized')}>
                Change LiveChat Widget Visibility
            </button>
            <LiveChatWidget
                license='your_license_here'
                visibility={liveChatWidgetVisibility}
            />
        </>
    );
};

export default LiveChatWidgetSection;