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Node Chat (using DocPad)

Built using Socket.io, DocPad, Backbone.js and Bootstrap

Play

  1. Get DocPad

  2. Run

    git clone git://github.com/balupton/nodechat.docpad.git
cd nodechat.docpad
docpad run

  3. Open http://localhost:9778/

Features

  • Send and receive messages instantly (no sign-in required)
  • Markdown support for messages
  • User information updates are synced to everybody
  • Gravatars to see who you are chatting to
  • Webkit chat notifications so you'll always notified
  • See who's actively connected
  • Times are all relative (e.g. '5 minutes ago')
  • Supports reconnections

Emphasis

Node Chat was built with the following emphasis

  • It is a real-time, live-updating web application, as such the technology it uses should reflect that purpose
  • It should be written to scale very easily
    • Utilised DocPad with modern markups to increase agility
    • Written with models to easily allow scaling of new and more complex fields and model requirements
      • No doubt the fields of User and Message will naturally change a lot over any course of time
  • It should be written to support security
    • ID generation for the messages happen on the server-side
    • Broadcasts can only be sent by the user who created the item we are sending

Technology

  • Socket.io provides the client/server syncing and broadcasting ability
    • Used to sync user information
    • Used to broadcast new messages
  • DocPad allows us to write our website in modern markups
    • Our HTML is written in CoffeeKup
    • Our CSS in Stylus
    • Our JavaScript in CoffeeScript
  • Backbone.js provides our MVC infrastructure for the frontend
    • All the UI components are written as Backbone views providing greater modularity
      • Less side-effects
      • Greater re-usability
      • Easier to scale and sync
    • All the models are written as Backbone models and collections
      • Allows us to automaticly update views when a model changes
      • Allows us to easily sync models to the server
  • Bootstrap provides our styling and design

These technologies work together really really well, as because a chat application is real-time (always having things changing, even without user interaction) we need a frontend implementation that is real-time too. Backbone.js and Socket.io fit perfectly for this, backbone.js provides the frontend infrastructure to provide a real-time / live-updating frontend interface, where socket.io provides the backend toolkit to sync the events. DocPad was a natural choice as it allows us to write our code in modern markups which greatly improves productivity, readability, and prevents errors.

Todo / Known-issues

  • Developer Documentation
  • Autocomplete of people's names when you type @ in the composer
  • Notifications for when people are typing
  • Notifications only when you are mentioned
  • Better iPhone support
  • Drag and drop files to the cloud support
  • Private conversations support
  • Multiple room support
  • Private room support
  • System commands. E.g. /nick Your New Displayname
  • When people mouse over a username, they should get all the user details
  • When people mouse over a relative time, they should get the absolute time
  • Preselected color combinations instead of randomly generated

License

Node Chat is developed by Benjamin Lupton and licensed under the MIT License