Node Chat (using DocPad)

Built using Socket.io, DocPad, Backbone.js and Twitter Bootstrap

Play

1. Get DocPad

2. Run

   git clone git://github.com/balupton/nodechat.docpad.git
   cd nodechat.docpad
   docpad run

3. Open http://localhost:9778/

Features

• Send and receive messages instantly (no sign-in required)
• Markdown support for messages
• User information updates are synced to everybody
• Gravatars to see who you are chatting to
• Webkit chat notifications so you'll always notified
• See who's actively connected
• Times are all relative (e.g. '5 minutes ago')
• Supports reconnections

Emphasis

Node Chat was built with the following emphasis

• It is a real-time, live-updating web application, as such the technology it uses should reflect that purpose
• It should be written to scale very easily
  • Utilised DocPad with modern markups to increase agility
  • Written with models to easily allow scaling of new and more complex fields and model requirements
    • No doubt the fields of User and Message will naturally change a lot over any course of time
• It should be written to support security
  • ID generation for the messages happen on the server-side
  • Broadcasts can only be sent by the user who created the item we are sending

Technology

• Socket.io provides the client/server syncing and broadcasting ability
  • Used to sync user information
  • Used to broadcast new messages
• DocPad allows us to write our website in modern markups
  • Our HTML is written in CoffeeKup
  • Our CSS in Stylus
  • Our JavaScript in CoffeeScript
• Backbone.js provides our MVC infrastructure for the frontend
  • All the UI components are written as Backbone views providing greater modularity
    • Less side-effects
    • Greater re-usability
    • Easier to scale and sync
  • All the models are written as Backbone models and collections
    • Allows us to automaticly update views when a model changes
    • Allows us to easily sync models to the server
• Twitter Bootstrap provides our styling and design

These technologies work together really really well, as because a chat application is real-time (always having things changing, even without user interaction) we need a frontend implemetnation that is real-time too. Backbone.js and Socket.io fit perfectly for this, backbone.js provides the frontend infrastructure to provide a real-time / live-updating frontend interface, where socket.io provides the backend toolkit to sync the events. DocPad was a natural choice as it allows us to write our code in modern markups which greatly improves productivity, readability, and prevents errors.

Todo / Known-issues

• Developer Documentation
• Autocomplete of people's names when you type @ in the composer
• Notifications for when people are typing
• Notifications only when you are mentioned
• Better iPhone support
• Drag and drop files to the cloud support
• Private conversations support
• Multiple room support
• Private room support
• System commands. E.g. /nick Your New Displayname
• When people mouse over a username, they should get all the user details
• When people mouse over a relative time, they should get the absolute time
• Preselected color combinations instead of randomly generated

License

Node Chat is developed by Benjamin Lupton and licensed under the MIT License