Feature request: Fetch all conversation ordered by timestamp

In XMTP, there isn't a direct way to retrieve conversations ordered by the time of their last received message or include the timestamp of the last received message in the conversation object. This is due to XMTP's commitment to privacy.

This means that an app must fetch all conversations up front, which might seem inefficient, especially for accounts with thousands of conversations. However, to mitigate this, apps built with XMTP should adopt a local-first cache architecture. This approach significantly speeds up subsequent app loads, turning the initial delay into a one-time occurrence and enhancing the overall user experience.

For now, because there is no server-side filtering you would need to fetch all the conversations and then go through the messages sorting by timestamp

// Fetch all conversations
const conversations = await client.conversations.list();

// Fetch the most recent message for each conversation
const conversationsWithLastMessage = await Promise.all(
  conversations.map(async (conversation) => {
    const messages = await conversation.messages();
    return {
      ...conversation,
      lastMessage: messages[0],
    };
  })
);

// Sort conversations by the timestamp of the most recent message
const sortedConversations = conversationsWithLastMessage.sort(
  (a, b) => b.lastMessage.sent - a.lastMessage.sent
);

We are currently working on making all of our SDKs local cache first!

xmtp / xmtp-react-native

Feature request: Fetch all conversation ordered by timestamp #175

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