A terminal-based P2P chat application using libp2p and Golang that uses a Kademlia DHT and the IPFS network for peer discovery and routing
Version: v0.1.0-alpha
Platform: Windows, Mac OSX and Linux
Language: Go >= 1.16
The application was inspired by chat examples found on libp2p's pubsub library, but is more evolved and fully featured version of it.
It uses a Kademlia DHT from libp2p for peer discovery and routing and supports a more fully featured host. The other components of the libp2p such as TLS encryption, peer active discovery, YAMUX stream multiplexing are integrated as well.
The application also allows users to jump between different chat rooms without having to restart the application and they can also change their usernames at any point.
The application works for two nodes on the same network or on different networks. Nodes that are behind NATs on private network are able to communicate with each other because the application attempts to configure the router automatically using UPnP and also uses AutoRelay (TURN) to facilitate the connection between private nodes by discovering relay nodes and connecting to them.
Communcation between nodes on different private networks is working from v0.1.0-alpha.
libp2p is a modular networking stack library born out of The IPFS Project.
IllChat's P2P and GossipSub layers are built using the Go implementation of libp2p.
go-libp2p Repository
libp2p Documentation
tview is terminal UI library written in Golang with a collection of rich, interactive widgets.
IllChat's UI layer is built using tview and tcell.
tview Repository
tcell Repository
The IllChat applcation can be installed by following these steps:
CLONE THIS REPO
$ git clone https://[repository.domain]/illchat_v1.git
$ cd illchat- Run the install command on a linux based shell (Git Bash for Windows)
$ make install- The application is now installed and can be invoked anywhere in the system.
$ illchat- Alternatively, the application can be simply started using
$ go run .When the IllChat application is invoked without any flags, it joins the ill_lobby chat room as a user named ill_testuser. This can be modified by passing the -user and -room flags.
The following starts the application and joins the hang-out chat room as a user named Boognish.
illchat -user Boognish -room hang-out
The method of peer discovery method can be modified using the -discover flag. Valid values are announce and advertise. The application defaults to advertise, and generally this would be how all host/peers would initiate. This value should only changed if peer connections aren't being established with the default method, and we would likely never allow a user to set this flag, rather, it would be automated with a connection algorithm.
The loglevel for the application startup runtime can be modified using the -log flag. Valid values are trace, debug, info, warn, error, fatal and panic. The application defaults to info.
- Integrated HQ, low bandwidth audio functionality for realtime multiparty voice communications
- Support for WebSocket transport layers for external notification channels
- Refactor to use
Protobufinstead ofJSONfor message encoding - Notifications for Illfonic backend system events; user joins, leaves, mutes, etc.
- Support for other PubSub routers (RandomSub, FloodSub or EpiSub)
- Integration wrappers for Unreal Engine 4/5 UNetDrivers with
goc