Chatty

Chatty is a WebSockets-based chat server that persists conversations using MongoDB.

Pre-Requisites

Debian

Get Ruby and Mongo.

sudo apt-get install ruby-full
sudo apt-get install mongodb mongodb-server

Fedora

Get Ruby and Mongo.

sudo yum install ruby
sudo yum install mongdb mongodb-server
sudo systemctl enable mongod.service
sudo systemctl start mongod.service

Common Setup

Install Bundler.

sudo gem update --system
sudo gem install bundler

Setup and Upgrade

Install all the required gems.

bundle install

Create or update the database.

bundle exec server/db_schema.rb

Start up Chatty in development mode.

foreman start

Production Setup

After following the common steps above, go through the additional instructions below.

SSL

Production installations should use SSL to protect users' privacy. StartSSL provides free SSL certificates.

The command below generates a CSR for use with any SSL provider, in ssl/chatty.csr.

openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -sha256 -nodes -keyout ssl/chatty.pem -out ssl/chatty.csr

If you use StartSSL, open ssl/chatty.csr in a text editor and copy-paste its contents in the certificate request form.

The certificate chain from the SSL provider should be saved in ssl/chatty.crt in PEM format.

If you use StartSSL, use the following commands to put together a chain.

vim ssl/chatty.cer  # Paste the OpenSSL certificate.
curl https://www.startssl.com/certs/ca.pem > ssl/ca.pem
curl https://www.startssl.com/certs/sub.class1.server.ca.pem > ssl/ca2.pem
cat ssl/chatty.cer ssl/ca.pem ssl/ca2.pem > ssl/chatty.crt
rm ssl/ca.pem ssl/ca2.pem ssl/chatty.crt

If you use git for deployment, use the commands below to add your SSL certificates to a (protected) prod branch, and always rebase against master instead of merging.

git checkout -b prod
git add -f ssl/chatty.crt ssl/chatty.pem
git commit -m "Production SSL certificates."

Chatty's application server is not well-suited to be exposed to the outside world and does not support SSL. Configure nginx as a reverse proxy, and point it to the Chatty SSL certificates. Below is a sample nginx configuration.

upstream chatty {
  server 127.0.0.1:12300;
}
server {
  listen 443;
  charset utf-8;

  ssl on;
  ssl_certificate /home/chatty_user/chatty/ssl/chatty.crt;
  ssl_certificate_key /home/chatty_user/chatty/ssl/chatty.pem;

  server_name chatty.server.com;
  root /home/chatty_user/chatty/public;
  location / {
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_connect_timeout 2;
    proxy_read_timeout 86400;
    if (!-f $request_filename) {
      proxy_pass http://chatty;
      break;
    }
  }
}

To test your SSL and nginx configuration on your machine, add your server's DNS name to /etc/hosts on your development machine.

127.0.0.1 chat.pwnb.us

Service

Chatty should be ran as a service in production, so it survives server reboots.

# Ubuntu / Debian
foreman export upstart /etc/init --procfile Procfile.prod --env prod.env --user $USER --port 12300
# Fedora / RedHat
foreman export systemd /etc/systemd/system --procfile Procfile.prod --env prod.env --user $USER --port 12300

Credits

The Flash shim that provides WebSocket support to Internet Explorer was sourced from the web-socket-js project.

JavaScript color processing is done by the color.js library.

The icons are provided by FontAwesome.

The Source Sans Pro font was chosen with the help of the Google Web Fonts Families demo.

pwnall/chatty