This is a chat application which can be used in any browser. It can have unlimited numbers of group members. Use it to send messages to your peers! Built with Node.js and Express.js. This app uses sockets to send and recieve messages to and from the server.
Now you can try out this app on: https://try-chatbud.herokuapp.com/
Ask your friends to open this link and chat with you! You can also open the link in multiple tabs to try it out.
You can go directly to https://try-chatbud.herokuapp.com/ to try this app out.
If you want to try this app on your local system, follow these steps:
-
Clone this repository in your local environment by the following command:
git clone https://github.com/guptasajal411/instant-chat-app.git -
Use NPM (Node Package Manager) to install dependencies for this project.
npm install -
Now use Node.js to start the chat application:
node server.js -
Go to
localhost:3000on your browser. Ask your friends to also do the same. If you dont have friends, you can also open the same link in multiple tabs. -
Now enter your Nickname in the box and send messages to each other. You can see that your friend's message will be updated in your browser with relevant metadata.
demo.mp4
Find the full demo here: https://youtu.be/vxyrRrdmYCg
I wanted to create a privacy centric chat application. As you already know, our chats on most of the applications use our chats to show us personalized ads. So I wanted to create something which doesn't store any data from my users. This application's data should be deleted as the members leave the chat.
This was my first application which I built while learning Back-end development. I used Node.js for its application environment. I used Express.js for the application framework of the application. Express is helpful for synchronizing frontend and backend parts of the web application. Also, I used websocket for emitting and receiving the messages from multiple users.
The biggest challenge was to learn websockets, which is a very large, bidirectional communication protocol. I had to dive deep down in the docs of socket.io. Also, rendering new messages to the interface was a very big challenge.
I learnt a lot of Backend development and different technologies. I have now learnt Node.js, Express.js and websockets. I can now use these newly learnt technologies to create more amazing and interesting applications.
Adding support for images is the next step in this application. Also, improving the UI and UX of this application is another thing which I'll be working on.