Metadata

Metadata is a map of extra information that can be attached to chat messages. It is not used by Ably and is sent as part of the realtime message payload. Example use cases are setting custom styling like background or text colors or fonts, adding links to external images, emojis, etc.

Do not use metadata for authoritative information. There is no server-side validation. When reading the metadata treat it like user input.

The key ably-chat is reserved and cannot be used. Ably may populate this with different values in the future.