InstaChat

A working replica of Instagram DMs and stories, written in Flutter and Go.

Note: This is currently a work in progress.

The stories aren't integrated, but you can take a look at them as a separate project: insta_stories

Deploy your own

You will need go and flutter installed on your system.

Before you start

To run your own instance, you'll need:

• a GCP project (for OAuth)
• an Amazon S3 bucket
• a domain name
• a VPS/cloud server

You can get all of these for free for limited use.

1. Create a GCP Project and setup OAuth:

   • Log into Google Cloud Console and create a new project.

2. Create an AWS S3 bucket for media hosting:

   • Be sure to un-check "Block all public access".

   • Add the following bucket policy, to allow public read access (replace <bucket name> with your S3 bucket name):

     {
       "Version": "2012-10-17",
       "Statement": [
         {
           "Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",
           "Effect": "Allow",
           "Principal": "*",
           "Action": "s3:GetObject",
           "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::<bucket name>/*"
         }
       ]
     }

• Edit ./instachat/.env to set DOMAIN as the domain name of your backend, along with your AWS S3 bucket URL.

  (Look at ./instachat/.env.example for more info)

• Create a release build of the app for use:

  flutter build apk --target-platform=android-arm64,android-arm,android-x64 --split-per-abi

  Created APKs will be present in ./instachat/build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/

• Setup the backend domain:

  • Get a domain name for the backend, free domain names are available on freenom for example.

  • Point the domain/subdomain name (eg. mybackend.site or api.instachat-server.net) to the IP address of your VPS/cloud server, by adding an A DNS record, with host of <your.domain> and value of the IP address.

  • It can take a few minutes for the DNS records to be updated, you can use dnschecker to check the DNS records on your address.

• Add the following nginx configuration on the server (replace <your.domain> with your domain name):

  server {
      server_name <your.domain>;
  
      location / {
          proxy_pass http://localhost:5555;
          proxy_http_version 1.1;
          proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
          proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
          proxy_set_header Host $host;
      }
  }

  Then restart and test nginx with:

  sudo systemctl restart nginx
  sudo nginx -t

• Setup an SSL Certificate for the backend:

  • Install certbot on your server, on Ubuntu it's just sudo snap install --classic certbot

  • Run sudo certbot --nginx to install your SSL certificate.

• Clone the repository on the server:

  git clone https://github.com/tusharsadhwani/instachat

• Create a postgres database for the backend.

• Edit ./server/.env to add your database and GCP/AWS credentials.

  (Look at ./server/.env.example for more info)

• In the ./server subdirectory, run:

  go run ./cmd/genkeys

  To generate an RSA key pair for the app.

• Start the server:

  go build ./cmd/server
  ./server

Local Development

You will need go and flutter installed on your system.

App

• Clone the repository:

  git clone https://github.com/tusharsadhwani/instachat

• Edit ./instachat/android/app/build.gradle, change package name from:

  defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.tusharsadhwani.instachat"
        ...

  to your own package name, eg. com.yourdomain.instachat

  defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.yourdomain.instachat"
        ...

• Log into Google Cloud Console

  • Go to APIs & Services > OAuth consent screen, and:

    • Choose the User Type to be External
    • Add the required fields:
      • App Name
      • User Support Email
      • Application Home Page (eg. https://mydomain.com)
      • Application privacy policy link (eg. https://mydomain.com/policy)
      • Application terms of service link (eg. https://mydomain.com/terms)
      • Authorized domains (set it the same as the domain of above links)
    • Save and Continue.

  • Go to APIs & Services > Credentials, and:

    • Click Create Credentials > OAuth Client ID

    • Choose Application type: Android

    • Add the package name (eg. com.yourdomain.instachat) and the SHA-1 key

      (use ./gradlew signingReport command in ./instachat/android/ subdirectory to get the SHA-1 value)

    • Give it any name, and click Create.

    • Click Create Credentials > OAuth Client ID (again)

    • Choose Application type: Web

    • Give it any name, and click Create.

    • Copy the Web Application Client ID

    • Now, create a file: ./instachat/app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml

    • Set its contents to be:

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
      <resources>
          <string name="default_web_client_id">XXXXXXXXXXXX-YOUR_GCP_CLIENT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com</string>
      </resources>

      Replace the dummy client ID with the ID you copied from GCP.

• Edit ./instachat/.env to set DOMAIN as the domain name of your backend, along with your AWS S3 bucket URL.

  (Look at ./instachat/.env.example for more info)

• In the ./instachat subdirectory, run the following:

  • Web:

    flutter run --web-port 5000 --web-renderer html

  • Android:

    adb reverse tcp:5555 tcp:5555
    flutter run

• To create Release builds of the app for use, run:

  flutter build apk --target-platform=android-arm64,android-arm,android-x64 --split-per-abi

  Created APKs will be present in ./instachat/build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/

Backend

• Setup a local SSL Certificate:

  • Install mkcert to generate a self-signed certificate:

  • On Linux, first install certutil:

    sudo apt install libnss3-tools
        -or-
    sudo yum install nss-tools
        -or-
    sudo pacman -S nss
        -or-
    sudo zypper install mozilla-nss-tools

  • Then install mkcert:

    cd /tmp
    git clone https://github.com/filosottile/mkcert
    cd mkcert
    go install -ldflags "-X main.Version=$(git describe --tags)"

  • Move to the instachat ./server subdirectory, and install the certificate:

    mkcert -install
    mkcert localhost

    This will generate localhost.pem and localhost-key.pem files for your local HTTPS server.

• Create a postgres database for the backend.

• In the ./server subdirectory, run:

  go run ./cmd/genkeys

  To generate an RSA key pair for the app.

• Edit ./server/.env to add your database and GCP/AWS credentials.

  (Look at ./server/.env.example for more info)

• Run the server:

  To get live reloading, use air:

  go get -u github.com/cosmtrek/air

  Make sure $(go env GOPATH) is in your PATH.

  Then run the command in ./server subdirectory:

  air -c .air.toml

  to start the server with HTTPS and hot reload.

Testing

To run tests:

• In the ./server subfolder, run:

  go test ./tests