Node Messagin App

Introduction

This is a messaging app I am building, not for production though I won't stop you, throught the use of react express & socket.io. The initial 'task' I was given was to create something that should bring students a sence of belonging when coming to a new school...

Features

• Live messaging
• Friends w/ friend requests (disclaimer - doesn't give you irl friends)
• channels, support for group chats, and 'MGCs', which are like discord guilds/servers
• Has users technically
• Saves messages & their authors
• Similar API to discord
• Markdown messages

TODO

• Use socket.io for friend requests
• Use socket.io for blocks
• Remove the /ws path for socket.io
• Add all the api parts for the front end
  • Add MGC for front-end
  • Add friend requests
  • Propper error handler
  • Dis allow messages to be sent from client (already not allowed by API)
  • etc
• Expand API
  • Pagination
• Add authentication n stuff for users (using passport, there is authentication for users through an ID & Token)
• Add ability to make new users
• Improve the looks of it...
• Docs
• Add a feature to send files

How to run

You need 2 parts to run this: the API and the client. Run the api first.

Dependencies

You will need some things before doing this. First off, you need an up to date NodeJS. Second, you need NPM (usually bundled with node). You also need a mongodb database. To check the versions run the following:

node -v
npm -v
mongodb

How to run the API

1. Go into the API folder. Once in there, open a console/terminal etc, so that the console is in the folder as well
   1. Alternatively, route through you file system using cd & ls/dir
2. Run the following command to install the needed node modules: npm install
   • Once this is done, a new folder "node_modules" should be made
3. Once that is done, run npm start

How to run the Client

1. Open a new terminal
2. Change directories (on the console) into the Client folder.
3. Once there, run npm install. This will be a longer install, since it has large modules in it
   • Folder "node_modules" should appear
4. run npm run build
5. After that is done, run the following commands:

(sudo?) npm install -g serve
serve -s build -l 3000

• This install globally the 'serve' module, and runs the optimized build server on port 3000

Interaction with client

The client is available at localhost:{whatever you but after -l option in the previous step}, defaults to localhost:3000. There let it load a bit, and once messages have loaded, you can safely interact.