Welcome back! In the previous lesson, you learned how to integrate API requests to create a dynamic chat interface. This allowed for real-time communication between the user and the server, enhancing the interactivity of our application. Today, we will build on that foundation by adding message suggestions to our chat interface. Message suggestions are predefined prompts that users can select to quickly send common queries. This feature not only improves the user experience by making interactions more efficient but also guides users in formulating their questions.

To implement message suggestions, we will dynamically create and manipulate DOM elements using JavaScript. This approach allows us to add suggestion buttons to the chat interface programmatically, making our application more flexible and maintainable.

First, we will create a div element to hold our suggestion buttons. This div will be positioned above the chat container and input elements to ensure easy accessibility for users. We will then create buttons for common queries such as asking about services, business hours, or contact information. These buttons will be appended to the div and will trigger a function to handle the user's selection.

Here's how you can add these buttons using JavaScript:

In this code, we use document.createElement to create the div and buttons, and addEventListener to handle button clicks. The suggestions array holds our predefined queries, which are used to populate the buttons dynamically.

The usePrompt function is a crucial part of our message suggestions feature. It takes a predefined prompt as an argument and populates the chat input with this prompt. This function is triggered when a user clicks on one of the suggestion buttons.

Here's how the usePrompt function is implemented:

In this function, the prompt parameter is used to set the value of the chat input field (messageInput). Once the input is populated, the sendMessage function is called to send the message to the server. This seamless integration allows users to quickly send predefined messages, enhancing the overall user experience.

In this lesson, you learned how to enhance your chat application by adding message suggestions using JavaScript. We covered the dynamic creation of suggestion buttons, the usePrompt function, and the integration of these features. This addition makes your chat interface more user-friendly and efficient.

As you move on to the practice exercises, focus on reinforcing these concepts and experimenting with the code. This hands-on practice will deepen your understanding and prepare you for the next unit, where we will focus on styling the interface to make it visually appealing using JavaScript. Keep up the great work, and let's continue building this exciting application together!