Kittens Chat

https://twitter.com/RecodingBlog/status/319247673515446273

This here's my attempt to write a neat-o node.js-based chat. You can find the live demo at http://kittens-chat.herokuapp.com/ but it might not be up-to-date.

Events

One of the nice things about Socket.io is that it allows one to define custom events at will. Kittens Chat uses the following events:

Emitted by server

• history: Sends an object containing every message recorded (These are still lost in the event of a server restart)
• message: Sends data* about a singular message
• loginAck: Acknowledges a client's login, assigns them a color
• announce: When someone logs in, their username is broadcasted out to welcome them

Emitted by client

• login: Sends the desired username to the server
• message: Sends a message that the user just typed in to the server
• remind: Quick fix for when the server loses all usernames on restart. remind reminds the server of the user's name/color.
• roomChange: The client wants to change to a new room

* A message is an object with four properties:

• author: Username of person who sent the message
• color: What color the author should display as
• text: Text content of the message. HTML will be escaped by Knockout.js
• time: Date object of when the message was recieved by the server

TODO for v1:

• Store history in MongoDB
• Dynamic system message of the day
• Format all messages in the code to be in the right order (They currently work, just bring them up to standard)
• Refactor user names/colors. There should be a central store either on client or server.
• Write up documentation on installing
• More permenant logins (session)
• Create system event for messages sent by system (only needing to send a string)

More TODO (if you're interested in contributing)

• Users can create rooms
• Various Forks/Branches
  • Teaching (Lots of extra comments explaining what's going on)
  • Troll chat (Randomly inserts extra messages, sends messages from other people, etc.)
  • Micro chat (Something intended as a plugin, instead of a complete package. Think of a small chat in the sidebar)