LaraLack is an open-sourced clone of Slack
- PHP >= 7.2.5
- MySQL >= 5.7
- Git
- Composer
- NodeJS
- Bootstrap 4
- jQuery
In order to install this repository on your local machine, first off make sure Git is installed on your system then clone it through the following command:
$ git clone git@github.com:behzadmoradi/laralack.git
Next you need to install PHP dependencies; to do so, you need the Composer package manager. Go to the project directory and fetch dependencies via this command:
$ composer install
In order to install front-end dependencies, after making sure you have NodeJS installed on you machine, run the following command:
$ npm install
Make a copy of .env.example file located in the root of the project and call it .env. At the moment, the only thing that needs to be changed on this file is the name, username, and password of the database. Go to phpmyadmin and create a new database called laralack or whatever name you want then update the following section in .env file:
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laralack
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=123456
Now you need to run the following Artisan command to create the required tables:
$ php artisan migrate
If successful, by going to phpmyadmin you can see that a couple of tables are created. Before using Laravel's encrypter, you must set a key option in your config/app.php configuration file; so as a final step in the installation process, do so by running php artisan key:generate command.
Another thing that needs to be updated in the .env file is mail service setup. Services like Mailgun, SendGrid, Spark etc, provide developers APIs to send emails through their application and Laravel supports all of them. After registration in one of those, the site provides you with a couple of credentials that must be added to the following section:
MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.sendgrid.net
MAIL_PORT=587
MAIL_USERNAME=apikey
MAIL_PASSWORD=SG.ACzXAZcPQkiesBluRYAbYQ.5lQ4Tv7KIU3KkxIdQMg1j86khEl2ZJFc
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=hi@example.com
MAIL_FROM_NAME="${APP_NAME}"
From now on, the only other thing in this process is setting up a CRON JOB on your Linux server to run the following command every minute of two:
* * * * * cd /path-to-your-project && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1
Laravel Scheduler takes care of the rest and runs the required jobs of the project; for example, by inviting people to a channel, new records will be added to the invitations table and when the CRON JOB runs, those records with zero value for the is_sent column will be selected and an invitation email will be sent to whatever value is stored in email column.
Also keep in mind that on you local machine and for testing purposes, you can just open a new termianl window, go to the projects directory and run php artisan schedule:run` command.
To start using LaraLack, you need to run php artisan serve command in the terminal and the server starts running at http://127.0.0.1:8000 and by going to this url, you would see that the project is up and running!
Before anything else, you have to make sure that laravel-websockets server is running; so create another terminal window and run the following command:
$ php artisan websockets:serve
By default, post number 6601 will be used for websockets.
Now, simply go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/register and create a new user (In Incognito mode of your browser, create yet another user for testing purposes.).
After login, you need to choose a name and username for your account then click on the plus sign next to the "Channels" on the left sidebar to create a new channel.
By clicking on the channel name, it appears on top of main section of the page with a down arrow. If you click on that arrow then "Invite people", you can send an invitation email to other users.
For example, you can enter the email of the user you already created in Incognito window and if you refresh this page, the channel name that has already been created by the other user will show up. From now on, the two users can easily chat through the channel that is assigned to both of them.
To start chatting one to one, click on the plus sign next to the "Direct Messages" on the left sidebar to create a direct chat with a specific user.
This image shows the popup for choosing a name and username:
This image shows the popup for adding a new channel:
This image shows the popup for inviting people to a channel:
This image shows the popup for creating a chat room for a specific user:
This image shows the chat history for a specific user:
This image shows the number of unread messages from another user:
If you discover any issue within this project, please send an e-mail to me via me.behzad.moradi@gmail.com.
Please see CHANGELOG for more information what has changed recently.
LaraLack is an open-sourced software licensed under the MIT.