How are the chat messages sorted when using GraphAPI?

Question

I’m using the Microsoft Graph API to list channel messages, following this documentation: Channel List Messages. I'm using the $top parameter to retrieve 50 messages at a time. I've noticed that the messages are consistently sorted by lastModifiedDateTime, but I couldn’t find any documentation that explicitly states whether the $top parameter enforces this sorting or if it's the default behaviour of the API. Could you clarify if the sorting is intrinsic to the API or controlled by the query?

Answer 1

Hi Hg,

Thank you for reaching out, Microsoft!

I attempted to retrieve channel messages without any OData query parameters, such as the $top parameter, and noticed that the messages are still ordered by lastModifiedDateTime . This implies that lastModifiedDateTime is the default ordering, even though there is no explicit documentation stating that the List Channel Messages API returns responses in this order. The List Chat Messages API documentation does mention that lastModifiedDateTime is the default order in which messages are returned in the response.

Also please refer below doc which mentions only $top and $expand are Optional query parameters supported by List Channel Messages and it does not support explicit ordering.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/channel-list-messages?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=http#optional-query-parameters

Please check attached screenshot for reference:

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Answer 2

Hi @Hg

According to the documentation, there are instructions for ordering the messages that come back accordingly.

It is sorted in descending order according to the lastModifiedDateTime parameter, which is the default sort.

Hope this helps.

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