CAHAT

A distributed chat service

How to use it

To use cahat you need to have Node, npm or yarn and MongoDB

Once you have the dependencies installed, it should be really easy to get a server running.

TL;DR

git clone https://github.com/dgrcode/chat-back.git
cd chat-back
npm install
npm start

Detailed version The steps to follow are

Clone this repo. With a terminal, go to the folder where you want to keep your files, and then run this command:
```
git clone https://github.com/dgrcode/chat-back.git
```

Install the project dependencies with the command:

// if you're using npm
npm install

// if you're using yarn
yarn install

[optional] Create a .env file whit one or more of the following options:
- PORT: is the port where the WebSocket server will be listening. It defaults to 4000
- NAME: is the name that the server will send to its clients. It defaults to "No name"
Run the database and the server. There is script can be used to check if your directory is ready to store the data, start the database, and run the server. You just have to run the command:
```
// if you're using npm
npm start

// if you're using yarn
yarn install
```
At this point the server is running, but remember when stopping it to stop the database, which was running in a background process. To ease the process there is a script that does that. You just have to run:
```
// if you're using npm
npm run kill

// if you're using yarn
yarn kill
```

This project doesn't implement any security measure. Therefore, any data transmitted through this chat service could be compromised

This project was created during my batch at the Recurse Center. My main goal for doing this project was to learn about:

So far this project implements the core functionalities of a chat, but eventually I'd like to add new features as:

Video chat
Private messaging
Maybe? A main backend service acting as DNS, and storing the relations between users and servers. WebSocket servers could voluntarily sign up into that main backend, or be kept in private