hyperswarm-universal-chat
A basic demo showing how you can make a p2p chat using hyperswarm.
Intro
Chat apps are the hello world of p2p stuff, here's a hello world you can build off of.
Properties:
- As P2P as it gets, no central authorities
- Works in node using hyperswarm and in the browser with hyperswarm-web
- Just echoes your peers' messages, nothing fancy
- Messages are totally ephemeral, if you missed it you missed it
API
const HyperswarmUniversalChat = require('hyperswarm-universal-chat')
const chat = HyperswarmUniversalChat({
swarm: null // Optional hyperswarm instance
})
// Join a channel and start getting peers
const channel = chat.channel('some name, who cares what it is, really')
channel.on('message', (peer, {message}) => {
console.log(`${message}`)
})
channel.on('peer', (peer) => {
console.log(`* connected to ${peer} *`)
connection.once('end', () => {
console.log(`* disconnected from ${peer} *`)
})
})
channel.send('Hello world!')
channel.close()
chat.destroy(() => {
console.log('Quit')
})How?
- Join a channel
- Derive key by hashing channel name
- Look for peers using key
- Connect to as many as you can
- Parse the connection with NDJSON
- When you establish the connection, send the key you're connecting from
- When you get a connection, listen for the key before doing anything (read 32 bytes?)
- When you get a message, take the message and print it.
Areas for improvement (WONTFIX)
- Deduplicate connections (OH WELL, it's a demo, you can figure it out. :P)
- Gossip of messages from peers
- Usernames
- Verifying users with signed messages
- Encryption of connections