/twiliochat-android

Android implementation of Twilio Chat

Primary LanguageJavaMIT LicenseMIT

twiliochat-android

Build Status

Android implementation of Twilio Chat

Running the Application

  1. Clone the repository.

  2. This application was developed using Android Studio. So, if you are using a different tool like Eclipse with ADT, there might be some additional steps you need to follow. If you are using Android Studio, just open the project using the IDE.

  3. Twilio's IP Messaging Client requires an access token generated using your Twilio credentials in order to connect. First, we need to setup a server that will generate this token for the mobile application to use. We have created web versions of Twilio Chat, you can use any of these applications to generate the token that this mobile app requires, just pick you favourite flavour:

    Look for instructions on how to setup these servers in any of the links above.

  4. Once you have the server running (from the previous step), you need to edit one file in this android application.

    ProjectRoot(app) -> res -> values -> keys.xml (on the Android Studio)
or
ProjectRoot/app/src/main/res/values/keys.xml (on the file system)

    This file contains the token_url key. The default values is http://10.0.2.2:8000/token. This address refers to the host machine loopback interface (127.0.0.1) when running this application in the android emulator. You must change this value to match the address of your server running the token generation application. We are using the PHP - Laravel version in this case, that's why we use port 8000.

    Note: In some operating systems you need to specify the address for the development server when you run the Laravel application, like this:

    $ php artisan serve --host=127.0.0.1

  5. Now Twilio Chat is ready to go. Run the application on the android emulator or your own device, just make sure that you have properly set up the token generation server and the token_url key. To run the application in a real device you'll need to expose your local token generation server by manually forwarding ports, or using a tool like ngrok. If you decide to work with ngrok, your keys.xml file should hold a key like this one:

    <string name="token_url">"http://<your_subdomain>.ngrok.io/token"</string>

    No need to specify the port in this url, as ngrok will forward the request to the specified port.

Note: The current version of the app uses a fixed version of Twilio SDK (included in the repository). This version only work for arm devices as the SDK includes some native code.