Chat Prototype

Overview

A stupid simple chat application. No database persistence, and no proper authentication.

This was initally built as a coding challenge for a job interview. See the specifications here

Architecture

This project is seperated into two main directories:

• /server: a Golang WebSocket server
• /client: a React app (using create-react-app and redux-starter-kit)

Usage

Prerequisites

• Git
• GO
• NodeJs, Npm

This was developed and tested only on OSX with go v1.13.1, node v12.3.1, and npm v6.9.0

Clone and install dependencies

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/
$ git clone git@github.com:zachlysobey/chat-prototype.git
$ cd client && npm install; cd -

NOTE: I'm actually not clear if there is anything that needs to be done to install Go dependencies. I have not experimented beyond initial development here.

Build the client

# (from the chat-prototype root directory)
$ cd client/
$ npm run build

Run the server

# (from the chat-prototype root directory)
$ cd server
$ go run main.go

Navigate to the app

By default it should be running at http://localhost:8000

Run the client in development mode

# (from the chat-prototype root directory)
$ cd client/
$ npm start

Navigate to http://localhost:8000 (instead of port :3000) for dev mode. This is the create-react-app dev server, and will auto-reload based on client source changes.

Run the client unit tests

*Note: I haven't actually touched the unit tests here. I'm sure they break. Usually I'd drive the development with tests, but since this is a quick prototype, that did not seem appropriate.

# (from the root directory)
$ cd client/
$ npm test

Whats next:

I've added desired features, and ideas for next steps as GitHub issues