React Chat

Motivation

This project was dedicated to working with WebSockets and ReactJS/Redux in tandem. What better than a chat app to do so? Keep in mind, this was a weekend project, there are still a lot of improvements that can be done to this app.

Live Demo

You can see a live demo of the app here. Use server chat.lgse.net:1337 and encryption SSL/TLS

Requirements

• Node.JS ^4.0.0
• NPM ^3.0.0
• Redis

Installation

git clone https://github.com/lgse/react-chat.git
npm install
npm run build:dist

Before Starting

By default, the chat server will run on port 1337 and connects to the Redis service via port 6379. Ensure that the appropriate firewall rules are in place for clients to be able to connect.

The WebSockets are using the unsecured ws:// protocol by default but can be configured to use SSL/TLS. The server configuration file is located in /bin/chat-server/config.json

Refer to the Primus library documentation for more info

A sample configuration for SSL would be:

{
  "redis": {
    "channel": "react-chat",
    "host": "127.0.0.1",
    "port": 6379
  },
  "primus": {
    "port": 1337,
    "root": "/folder/with/https/cert/files",
    "cert": "myfilename.cert",
    "key": "myfilename.cert",
    "ca": "myfilename.ca",
    "pfx": "filename.pfx",
    "passphrase": "my super sweet password",
    "transformer": "websockets"
  },
  "webServer": {
    "port": 80
  }
}

How to start the Chat Server / WebServer

This will start both the chat server and webserver

npm run chat-server

You can also run the chat server standalone if you choose to host the static content using a different web server

npm run chat-server:standalone