Ephemeral Chat

This is a gRPC chat service using the following stack:

• Python gRPC server
• React/TS frontend
  • DaisyUI Components

Features

• Connect and disconnect users
• Send and receive messages in real-time
• Supports multiple separate conversations
• Allows users to talk to each other
• Conversations can be cached for a limited time or completely ephemeral--deleting after both users disconnect

To-Do

• Allow for multiple connections and keep them all separate
• Have subscriptions run until disconnected
• Remove group chats
• Remove auto-assign to open rooms
• Route web requests through Envoy proxy
• Change server gRPC channel to be secure; only allow Envoy to connect
• Flesh out front-end gRPC client; add logging + error handling
• Local storage
• Handle timeouts
• Relieve server threads when conversation is gone
• Debug disconnects

Usage

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/ndoniyor/ephemeral-chat

2. Navigate to the project directory:

   cd ephemeral-chat

3. Install the required dependencies:

   conda env create -f environment.yml

4. Run the server:

   python src/serve.py

   The server will start listening for connections on localhost:11912.

5. Run the client(s):

   python src/connect.py

API

The server provides the following gRPC methods:

• Connect(ChatUser) -> ChatUserConnected: Connect a user to the chat server.
• Disconnect(ChatUser) -> ChatUserConnected: Disconnect a user from the chat server.
• SendMessage(Message) -> Empty: Sends a message to the server
• SubscribeMessages(ChatUser) -> stream Message: Subscribe a user to receive messages.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

MIT