Socketchat Server

Socketchat Server is a backend chat app implemented with Express and Socket.io. Live site can be found here

Table of contents

• Overview
  • The challenge
  • Links
• My process
  • Built with
  • What I learned
  • Continued development
  • Useful resources
• Author

Overview

The challenge

The server should be able to:

• Subscribe users to a chat room of their choice
• Allow users to enter a room with a custom nickname.
• Allow users to chat with other users within the room.
• Keep a tally of room data like active users, room name, user profile pics

Links

• Codebase: This repo, check out the code!
• Live Site URL: View project live

My process

I love express because it's so lightweight and fast to get setup. This was my first project with Socket.io and I found it similar to Express: great documentation and fast setup.

I dove into understanding WebSockets as a two-way interactive communication session allowing fast event driven response cyles between server and client. Perfect for real time chat apps.

Built with

• Express
• Socket.io
• CORS

What I learned

The power of WebSockets! The fast, interactive, event-driven nature of WebSockets feels intuitive to me and introduces so many exciting possibilities than traditional HTTP request/response cylces. I feel as though I learned the introductory concepts behind WebSockets and that I would be comfortable working with them again and implementing basic two-way sessions in future apps.

Continued development

There is a lot to this app that could be expanded like adding persistant data storage, user authentication, profiles, private messaging, and more. I may try adding voice chat at some point to learn more about modern browser media capabilities.

Useful resources

• Socket.io Development Docs
• CORS Handling for Socket.io was also important to understand

Author

• Be sure to follow me on Github!
• Connect with me on LinkedIn - Michael Carr
• Twitter - @xyeres