Real-time Chat Application

Introduction

This is an application that allows users to join a common chat room, post and receive messages. The front-end is written in ReactJS, server is written in NodeJS with real-time features from Socket.IO. Database used is MongoDB (hosted by mLab). A running version could be accessed here.

Installation and Local Development

Clone this project from Github

git clone https://github.com/DatNgo1995/ChatApp.git

Go to the local directory and install with the following commands. For server side:

cd ChatApp
npm install
npm start

For client side:

cd chat-app
npm install
npm start

Client runs at localhost:3000.

The application uses mLab for MongoDB database due to the limitation of a free Heroku account. However, ideally, for local deployment, local MongoDB can be used. To setup MongoDB, create new database. In a new terminal, start MongoDB by typing

mongod

By default, MongoDB server starts at port 27017. Assuming the database name is chat-app, in file .env, at line 1, change the value of variable MONGO_URI to:

mongodb://localhost:27017/chat-app