Friend Chat is a chat integration platform for Friend. It is built to make it fairly straightforward to add access to 3rd party chat APIs. It is a client - server architecture where the server handles the connection to the remote API and presents the content to the client. Multiple clients can be connected per account, all staying in sync. Accounts are created and logged in through Friend, no extra setup required.
Friend Chat allows peer to peer video and audio calls over webRTC, supported by the presence service. The limits to number of participants is practical; the bandwidth and power of your device. The live sessions have several modes, available through the live view menu.
Live invites can be sent through any module. It is sent as a data string, and as long as the invitee is also using Friend Chat, it will be intercepted and presented to the user. The live session is then established over the presence service.
Any live session can be shared through a clickable link. This is a public invite and can be used by any number of people until it is explicitly canceled. People using this link will join as a guest with either a randomly generated name or one they choose themselves.
Screen-sharing is available for chrome through an extension. The option is found in the live view menu, and will either prompt you install the extension or offer to initiate screen sharing.
Enableing streaming changes a room from supporting peer to peer sessions to selecting a single source and distributing this users stream to everyone else. While still using webRTC, a proxy server is used to distribute the stream, so the source only needs to send once. For this setting to be available Presence configuration must point to a third party service, Janus conferencing bridge. Janus must be set up separately.
Modules allow integration with 3rd party chat services. They have a server part that communicates with the remote service/server and a client part with a custom UI that presents the data. Current modules are IRC, Presence and Treeroot. Presence is always there and IRC is added by default.
Internet Relay Chat, because it would be weird not to have it. Covers most basic needs and commands. An abbreviated list of commands if you are new to IRC:
- /nick new_nick - change your nick
- /action does something silly - me does something silly
- /join #channel_name - join a channel
- /part - in channel, leave the channel
This can also be changed in settings. More commands and how irc works in general can be found on the internet.
Presence provides temporary or persistent many-to-many rooms for chatting and video / audio conferencing. Invites to presence rooms can be sent through the other modules. More info in the FriendSoftwareLabs/presence repository!
The Treeroot module integrates the chat part of the Treeroot system. It provides one to one chat, optionally end to end encrypted. You'll need to add the module ( 'add chat account' in the menu ) then log in with ( or create a new ) Treeroot account.
- A properly installed Friend Core server, running with TLS encryption. If your current Friend Core is not using TLS encryption, the installation script will offer you the option to create self-signed keys and will do the correct modifications in Friend Core configuration files. Please note that self-signed keys will generate warning messages from your browser, and the only way (starting from Chrome v57) to avoid these warnings is to have the keys certified by an external party.
- A domain name for both Friend Core and Friend Chat servers. If you are running things localy, defining it in etc/hosts and pointing to localhost or a virtual machine will be fine. For example : '127.0.0.1 test.localfriend'. Enter this very domain name when the installation script asks for it. The script will update Friend Core accordingly and configure Friend Chat. In order for Friend Chat to work within the Friend Workspace, you must connect to your machine using the domain name you entered during installation. For example, connecting to your Friend machine with https://localhost:6502 and having the Friend Chat domain as 'test.localfriend' will not work, even if 'test.localfriend' points to 127.0.0.1...
- Ports used by the server components are 3000 ( https GET ), 3001 ( https/wss ), 27960 ( TCP with TLS ), 27970 ( https/wss ). Except for 27960, which is a FriendChat-Presence servers connection, these ports need to be open or proxied for a working setup.
- STUN/TURN: while setting up the STUN/TURN servers(s) is not part of this installation, they are vital to a working live chats/conference setup. Public STUN servers are out there ( google it, also google has one ), but TURN servers are far more resource intensive and you will likely have to set up your own. Ports used for these are usually UPD 3478, 5349 and they set up p2p connections in the UDP 40k-65k range.
- mysql - which should be already installed for Friend Core. Friend Chat and Presence servers need their own database. The installation script will create them for you.
- node.js will be installed by the installation script if not found.
- Presence server - will be automatically cloned from GIT and installed by the installation script directly in Friend build folder.
Go to the directory where you cloned Friend Chat from GIT. Run './install.sh' and answer the questions. The installation script will gather as much data from the Friend Core installation as it can, and will show as many pre-filled value as it can. You can restart this script at any time, after pulling changes from GIT for example.
The installation script automatically adds systemd service files.
To start:
sudo systemctl start friendchat-serversudo systemctl start presence-server
To enable automatic start:
sudo systemctl enable friendchat-serversudo systemctl enable presence-server
To view logs in case of problems:
sudo journalctl -fu friendchat-serversudo journalctl -fu presence-server
After installing Friend Chat and its servers, and restarting Friend Core
(sudo systemctl restart friendcore),
you will have to install the Friend Chat application in your Friend
machine. In the Workspace menu, choose the 'Tools / Software' option,
locate Friend Chat in the list and click install. You will then find the
Friend Chat icon in the 'System:Software/Internet' folder.
The Friend Chat client has been localized in English and French.
Friend Chat depends on the user existing in Friend and calls Friend Core to authenticate them when they log in.
Upon launch, Friend Chat will be in the friendly UI mode, whith presence represented as 'Conference rooms', and Treeroot as 'Contacts'. You will be asked to create a Treeroot account ( its a third party service ). Conference rooms do not depend on Treeroot.
If you intend to work on the source code of the Friend Chat client application, the Friend Chat server or the Presence server, please read the following.
You will find the sourcecode of the Friend Chat client application in the
'client' folder of the friendchat directory.
To test your modifications, run the updateAll.sh script : it will copy the
modified files to the Friend build/resources/webclient/apps/FriendChat directory.
Please note that after updating the files, in order for the new files to be
used by Friend Core, you will have to clear the cache by using the
Workspace menu option 'System / Clear cache'.
Another alternative is to stop Friend Core, update the files, and restart
Friend Core.
You will find the sourcecode of the Friend Chat server in the 'server' folder
of the friendchat directory.
As for the client, you will need to run the updateAll.sh script to copy the
modified files in the Friend build/services/FriendChat folder.
updateAll.sh also calls npm install automatically
to update the node.js modules used by the Friend Chat server : if you copy
the files manually, do not forget to do a npm install afterward.
The server will be automatically stopped and restarted by the script.
The Friend Chat installation script clones the Presence server directly into
the Friend build/services/Presence directory. If you intend to work on it,
we suggest that you clone the server in another more accessible directory.
The Presence server can be found on Github.
You can update the files by using its own update.sh script,
which will copy the modifications to their proper location and run
npm install automatically.
The server will be automatically stopped and restarted by the script.
- Create a new branch for each feature or patch.
- Only finished features or patches will be merged with master.
- All commits to master must be reviewed by atleast one person ( Espen )
- Merges to master will be squashed. The last commit MUST update VERSION file, the commit message MUST start with 'feature' or 'patch'. The commit message should be descriptive, but not verbose.
- Dev is for fooling around / testing. It is deleted and force pushed regularily, dont trust it.
The purpose here is to keep master git log as a useful history, for things like writing patch notes and checking up on what was added when by who.
- x is incremented when the team feels like it.
- y is incremented when a feature is merged into master.
- z is incremented when a patch is merged into master.
FriendChat is licenced under AGPL3