chat-app

This chat application was a learning tool to experiment with websockets and concurrency. I started it as a long-term project to make my own implementation of the matrix.org protocols based on element.io. In its present state, it is a simple chat room application with user authentication that secures critical endpoints with same-site, HTTP Only JWTs to prevent XSS.

The next step in the project will be implementing end-to-end encryption. My current plan is to utilize Go compiled to WASM in the frontend for all encryption and decryption.

It has an accompanying Next.js based frontend located here. A live demo does not yet exist.

Features

• user authentication
• custom user avatars
• user nicknames
• persisted chat room messages
• chat room creation/deletion

Set-Up

1. Use docker-compose.yml to "compose up" the Postgres container.
   • ENV variables: See the included .env.sample.
2. Run go build
3. Run ./chat
4. That's all it takes to start up the backend!

Notes:

• The app utilizes GORM, so there is minimal configuration needed to get PostgreSQL running properly!
• By default, there is no user accounts made upon creation. To create one, utilize the createClient endpoint referenced here in the router/router.go package, and defined here in the handler/client.go package.
• All user passwords are stored in the DB as a hash.
• The .env.sample and included docker-compose.yml will work together out of the box. You will want to set your own SECRET variable though!

The way forward

1. User permissions
   • Banning/booting other users
   • Rooms creation/deletion
2. Sending files/images via chat
3. E2E encryption using Go WASM on the frontend.