Messenger Int'l

Purpose

This is a Messenger copy project with an additional message translation feature. It was originally developed together with one programming partner, Rajat Basali (check spelling). Later, the project was forked and I continued to add features and bug fixes.

Demo

The project is currently hosted at: https://messenger-intl.herokuapp.com/

These are the features:

Ability to register and log in to the app.
Ability to send an email invitation to friends to connect on the app.
Ability to accept or reject an invitation.
Ability to start a conversation with connected friends.
(disabled) Ability to view conversation message in native language (translated) or the friend's language (original).

(User) Run the App

These items require setup before you can use the app to chat.

At least 2 users need to be registered with different language preference (if you want to try language translation).
One user should send an invitation to the second user to connect as friends.
The second user should accept the friend invitation.
Afterward either user can initiate a two-person chat by clicking on their friend's avatar from the Friends list.
To start a group chat, from the Chats tab, click the pencil icon. Enter the email addresses of the people to chat with (comma-separated). Enter the chat message (bottom) and click the Enter/Return key.

Known Limitations

TODO

(Developer) Run the App

These are instructions to download and run the application locally.

Dependencies

There are 3rd party dependencies:

MongoDB Atlas (hosted)
SendGrid API (for sending email)
Google Translation API

These files need to be copied and updated with credentials (like API keys for 3rd party libraries) before a local app can run. Please refer to the documentation from MongoDB, SendGrid, and Google for instructions on how to create developer accounts for those services.

/server/sample.env

This file needs to be copied and renamed as .env

/server/sample.translation-credentials.json

This file is a template for the Google API key. During account setup, there is a step where you download a private key file (json). Make a copy of this file, rename it as translation-credentials.json, and place it in the /server directory.

Install libraries

Clone this repository.

Install the server libraries.

cd server
npm install

Install the client libraries.

cd ../client
npm install

Startup

Start the app server

cd ../server
npm run dev

Start the client dev server

cd ../client
npm run start

Deployment