WebSocket Chat

This is a simple Go program and a JavaScript web application that allows the user to "chat" with a command line program running on the host computer.

This program was developed to expose through the websocket protocol the chat program developed for testing the Othernet Dreamcatcher capabilities.

Message length limit

Currently, messages are limited to 47 characters. This is the number of characters that we could reliably transmit in our trials. If you would like to build a custom version to change the limit, you can do that by modifying the JavaScript part of the code.

Getting the latest version

Look under releases.

Running the server

To start the server run with:

./wschat PATH_TO_CHAT

PATH_TO_CHAT is full path to the Othernet chat program.

You can change the address and the port to which the server should bind by specifying the --addr command line argument:

./wschat --addr 0.0.0.0:3000 PATH_TO_CHAT

Developing

You will need both Go and NodeJS in order to develop this application. This program uses statik to bundle the static assets inside the binary.

To build the front end, run the following command:

npm run build

This will build the static assets and create a dist directory containing the compiled bundle. It will also update the statik package.

To build the server run the usual:

go build

You will end up with wschat executable file (or wschat.exe on Windows) in the project directory.

Cross-compiling for Dreamcatcher

To cross-compile, you will need to have upx installed.

To cross-compile this program for the Dreamcatcher (build on a non-Dreamcatcher machine), run the following command:

GOARM=7 GOARCH=arm GOOS=linux go build -ldflags="-s -w"

On Windows machines, the above will not work. Use this instead:

set GOARM=7 
set GOARCH=arm 
set GOOS=linux 
go build -ldflags="-s -w"

Once the build is done, we compress the binary using UPX:

upx --brute wschat