History

Messages

const messages = await channel.history({ limit: 50 });

Newest first. Each entry is the message as it was published:

{
  channel: 'chat:lobby',
  name: 'message',
  data: { text: 'hello' },
  connectionId: 'conn-…',
  timestamp: 1710000000000,
}

limit defaults to 100.

This is a REST call — it goes to restEndpoint, not over the socket, and it needs the history capability on that channel. It works from a Blackevin.Rest client with no connection at all:

const rest = new Blackevin.Rest({ key: process.env.BLACKEVIN_KEY });

await rest.channels.get('orders:new').history({ limit: 50 });

Presence history

The enter / leave / update log, same shape of call:

const events = await channel.presence.history({ limit: 100 });

{
  channel: 'chat:lobby',
  action: 'enter',
  clientId: 'alice',
  connectionId: 'conn-…',
  data: { status: 'online' },
  timestamp: 1710000000000,
}

It also checks the history capability, not presence — reading the past is one permission whatever it is the past of.

If the node has no presence-history store wired, this answers [] rather than failing. An empty list therefore means "nothing recorded", which on a node without persistence is always true.

History or rewind?

Both hand you old messages. They differ in what you do with them.

Use rewind when the old messages should flow through the same code path as the live ones — a chat log, an event feed. Use history() when you want them as data: a paginated view, an export, a diff.

const channel = realtime.channels.get('chat:lobby', { params: { rewind: 20 } });

See rewind.

What gets written

History is written on the origin publish only. A message forwarded to another node in a cluster is not persisted a second time, and a rewind delivery is not persisted at all — otherwise every replay would grow the log it read from.

Retention

Messages are stored partitioned by day and read newest-first. There is no Ably-style hard cap in the schema; what you can read back depends on the retention configured for your account in the console.