fwendme is the a brand-new group chatting app for you to communicate with any number of your frie... I mean fwends.
##features
fwend.me is based off of the functionality of GroupMe, features include
- Real-time messaging. All group members receive your message the second it's pushed.
- Push notifications for whenever you miss a message in another chat.
- Unread messages notifications.
- Full user page. Ability to edit your alias and avatar.
- Create a new chat! Name it whatever you want!
- Functionality to adjust a chat's members list, portrait, and name.
- Assigns all members of a group as your new fwend the moment you interact with them.
##Stack
I experimented with a few technologies, and while a lot of them helped make fwend.me great, some didn't make the cut. Most notably, I had to scrap my personalized node.js server due to time constraints.
If you want to check out the node portion, I appended a quick client-side on it and heroku'd it without a database. check it out: Code: (https://github.com/samfeder/Node.Fwends) Heroku: (http://node-fwends.herokuapp.com/)
Here are some of the tools that I did use:
Back-End: fwend.me is built with a Rails 4 RESTful API.
- JSON is packaged and delivered using jBuilder
- PostgreSQL database
Front-End: fwend.me's back-end API is consumed by a Backbone.js front-end with the goal of never making the user fully leave the chat room to perform any CRUD operation.
- AJAX is called on the fly to display and submit data to and from the back-end asynchronously
- Pusher is used to push updates to all chat users in real time.
- Backbone.js is prevelent throughout the entire system, being used to create chats and messages, and to edit chats and users.
- jQuery is used extensively in animations and for appending messages to the DOM.
Still on my list of things to do:
- Paginating old messages
- Image Gallery of all shared images
- Email invites
- liking messages
- moar css'es. The stylin' never ends.
Wow! Cool app! Why'd ya build it?
Glad you asked. I use group chatting everyday as a way to stay in touch with my friends and family, I found it naturally to dive in face-first and take a look under the hood at how it works.
How much money do you think this has the potential to make for you? I'd guess somewhere in the billions.
You might be slightly exaggerating. Realisitically, I intend to earn a few cool conversations about my design and development principles, stack choices, and hopefully a compliment or two.
This app has changed my life. Can I be your girlfriend?
No. But if you have a passion for developing in MVC frameworks with a skinny controller and fat model, despise page-loads, and get giddy at the prospect of real-time data package broadcasts, you should get in touch.