AblyDocs

Rooms messages history

Open in

Use the ably rooms messages history command to get historical messages from an Ably Chat room.

Synopsis

ably rooms messages history <room-name> [options]

Arguments

room-name
Required

The name of the chat room to retrieve history from.

Options

--limit | -l

The maximum number of messages to return. Defaults to 50.

--order

The order in which to return messages. Options are newestFirst or oldestFirst. Defaults to newestFirst.

--show-metadata

Display metadata attached to messages. Defaults to false.

--start

The start of the time range to query. Accepts ISO 8601, Unix timestamp, or relative time formats.

--end

The end of the time range to query. Accepts ISO 8601, Unix timestamp, or relative time formats.

--json

Output results as compact JSON. Mutually exclusive with --pretty-json.

--pretty-json

Output results in formatted JSON. Mutually exclusive with --json.

--verbose | -v

Enable verbose logging. Can be combined with --json or --pretty-json.

Examples

Get recent message history for a room:

ably rooms messages history my-room

Get history with a limit:

ably rooms messages history my-room --limit 10

Get history within a time range:

ably rooms messages history my-room --start "2025-01-01T00:00:00Z" --end "2025-01-02T00:00:00Z"

Get history in oldest-first order:

ably rooms messages history my-room --order oldestFirst

Retrieve history starting from a specific time:

ably rooms messages history my-room --start "2025-01-01T00:00:00Z"

Retrieve history from the last hour using relative time:

ably rooms messages history my-room --start 1h

Retrieve room message history with metadata displayed:

ably rooms messages history --show-metadata my-room

Retrieve room message history using an API key environment variable:

ABLY_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY" ably rooms messages history my-room

Retrieve room message history in JSON format:

ably rooms messages history my-room --json

Retrieve room message history in formatted JSON:

ably rooms messages history my-room --pretty-json

See also

  • Rooms — Explore all ably rooms commands.
  • CLI reference — Full list of available commands.