talkhouse

WebRTC based peer to peer video calling and messaging web app build with MERN stack.

Libraries used

• React for frontend
• Socket.io as signaling server and realtime communication
• simple-peer for peer-to-peer WebRTC connections
• Express as server
• MongoDB for persistance of data
• Material UI for creating ui
• Redux for state management
• Typescript for type safety, cure for headache you get when props are flowing all over the app with no hint

Features

• User authentication and authorization
• Audio and Video Chat
• Messaging with storage of messages in the database
• Sending invitation to friends
• Able to accept or reject an invitation
• Online indicator
• Notify on typing
• Sceen sharing
• Accept and reject an incoming call

and more....

New Features added recently:

• Group Chats Create group chats like in whats'app. Group Admins can add members to group and participants can leave the group.
• Remove friend, ability to unfriend someone
• Talkhouse Spaces like Twitter spaces. You can host a space and any of your friends can join that space.

The talkhouse spaces are implemented using MESH topology to establish a peer-to-peer network between every person or client joining the space. i.e, every person maintains a p2p connection with every other person in the room.

Installation

1. Clone project

git clone git@github.com:richod1/talkhouse.git

Manual

If you dont't have docker installed, or don't know how to docker, [who doesn't know docker in the first place 😑]

cd into root project

1. cd server

npm install to to install server dependencies

Setup required environment variables:

• MONGO_URI_DEV
• JWT_SECRET

npm run dev to start development server with nodemon

Make sure you have mongoDB installed

1. cd client

npm install installs client dependencies.

npm run start to start the react development server.

Docker

Running project through docker is recommended. You don't have to do any setup. Just one docker-compose command and boom project is up and running 😊

docker-compose up --build

Make sure you have docker installed

TODOS

• Enable group video and messaging functionality
• Implement confirm email, reset password and email sending on friend invitation, Not a big deal to implement, just a little lazy to implement it
• Store messages in an encrypted form in the database. (Did this for security reason on production)
• Enhace the UI. I hate CSS, not that good at it 🥱😓 . (Looks reasonably good now)