Message Payload

Every live inbound message carries the complete Zaileys MessageContext — the decoded, normalized payload Zaileys is known for. One helper unlocks it:


import { zaileysContext } from 'chat-adapter-zaileys'
 
bot.onSubscribedMessage(async (thread, message) => {
  const ctx = zaileysContext(message)
  if (!ctx) return // history fetches / sent echoes have no live context
 
  ctx.senderDevice                     // 'android' | 'ios' | 'web' | 'desktop'
  ctx.isForwarded / ctx.isViewOnce     // 20+ decoded flags
  const quoted = await ctx.replied()   // the full decoded quoted message
  await ctx.react('🔥')                // zaileys shortcuts still work
})

The raw shape

Message.raw is a ZaileysRaw:

Field	Type	When present
`key`	`WAMessageKey`	Always — remoteJid, id, fromMe.
`context`	`MessageContext`	Live inbound messages.
`message`	`WAMessage`	Live inbound + history fetches (the raw Baileys message).

zaileysContext(message) is the typed accessor for raw.context — it returns null instead of forcing you to null-chain.

Field mapping

How the adapter fills the Chat SDK Message from MessageContext:

Chat SDK field	Source
`id`	`ctx.chatId` (the WhatsApp message id)
`threadId`	`ctx.roomId` — always the conversation target
`text`	`ctx.text` (body / caption / poll name, unwrapped)
`formatted`	`ctx.text` parsed from WhatsApp markup to mdast
`author.userId`	`ctx.senderId` — phone-number jid, LID already resolved
`author.fullName`	`ctx.senderName` (push name)
`author.isMe`	`ctx.isFromMe` or tracked adapter sends
`metadata.dateSent`	`ctx.timestamp` (already in ms)
`metadata.edited`	`ctx.isEdited`
`isMention`	`ctx.isTagMe`
`attachments`	`ctx.media` — lazy, see below

Lazy media

Media never downloads until you ask. ctx.media (or the SDK-standard message.attachments[0]) exposes metadata immediately and bytes on demand:


const [attachment] = message.attachments
if (attachment) {
  attachment.mimeType            // 'image/jpeg'
  attachment.size                // bytes, when known
  const buffer = await attachment.fetchData() // downloads now
}
 
// or through the zaileys context:
const ctx = zaileysContext(message)
if (ctx?.media && 'buffer' in ctx.media) {
  const buffer = await ctx.media.buffer()
}

Sticker attachments map to type: 'image', documents to type: 'file'.

What the context gives you beyond the SDK

Straight from Zaileys’ message payload :

Identity — uniqueId (per-message fingerprint), staticId (stable sender-in-room hash), senderLid, senderDevice, receiverId
Flags — isGroup, isBroadcast, isStory, isViewOnce, isEphemeral, isForwarded, isQuestion, isPrefix, isTagMe, isEdited, isDeleted, isPinned, isBot, isHideTags, and more
Lazy functions — roomName(), receiverName(), replied(), message() (raw WAMessage)
Actions — reply(text), react(emoji)
Citation — citation.authors() / citation.banned() predicates from your Zaileys config

mentions, links, chatType, and typed media unions (poll, location, event, contact, album, …) are all documented in Zaileys → Message Payload .