zchat

ZChat is an interactive media rendering chat service which aims to enhance the user's chat experience. It includes simple syntax for rendering images, videos, and formatted text.

This project contains the frontend and a backend testbench for the zchat application.

Requirements

The following are required to use the testbench:

• Node.js

Setup

Navigate to the base folder and run:

$ npm install

This will install all requirements for the local project. Then to start the server, run:

$ node server.js

This will begin an interactive session where you can type messages into the terminal and have it render in a web browser.

Navigate to the page: http://localhost:8081 and you will see the empty client. Whenever you type a message into the server console, it should render to this client.

Warning: Do NOT open more than one client at a time, or else it may not render properly.

Syntax

The syntax is as follows:

• Basic text is rendered without any special characters attached.
• Italic text results from any text between one asterix symbol: (eg. *this will render italic*)
• Bold text results from any text between two asterix symbols: (eg. **this will render bold**)
• Bold + Italic text results from any text between three asterix symbols: (eg. ***this will be bold+italic***)
• Strikethrough text results from any text between two tilde symbols: (eg. ~~this will be strikethrough~~)
• Underlined text results from any text between underscores: (eg. _this will be underlined_)
• Media (eg images or videos) are rendered by using the syntax: ![http://link_to_media.png]
• Formatting is accomplished via the syntax: {text you want to format;<rule1>=<value>, <rule2>=<value>}. The following formatting rules are included:
  • Color is specified with either color=<colorname> or by color=#RRGGBB. You can also exclude the color keyword for simplicity as long as it is the first parameter. Examples: {This text will be red;red}, {This text will be blue;#0000FF}, {This text will be rainbow;rainbow}, {This text will blink;blink}