Chatee

Chatee is a simple chat application created for testing and demonstration purpose. Chatee provides you with full end-to-end encryption communication with the use of PrivMX Bridge by Simplito. It is a great starting point for building your own chat application with end-to-end encryption.

Features

Chatee provides essential chat features, including group chats and file attachments. All the data exchanged within Chatee is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that only the end users can read (decrypt) their messages. It means that even the platform hosting provider cannot access user data.

Chatee categorizes users into two distinct roles:

• Staff: Authorized personnel who administer user accounts and permissions.
• Regular users: Individuals who interact with the app's features and functionalities for communication.

All Staff users can invite others by sending them an invitation token generated inside the app. Before generating a token you can decide whether the account will have Staff permissions or be a regular user. Regular users can create new chats only with Staff members. Staff can add chats with all the users in the server, regardless of their status.

Chats occur in real-time. You can send text messages and files up to 50 MB.

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Basics

Chatee consist of two parts: Web Application and Server Backend (both written in Next.js). Server Backend manages user accounts and utilizes MongoDB for persistent data storage.

All the sent messages and files are managed by PrivMX Bridge, to ensure they are properly encrypted and are not stored in your server environment.

Requirements

• Node.js in 20.10 version;
• Docker for running PrivMX Bridge instance;
• MongoDB instance - you can instatiate MongoDB with our docker compose file, more info below.

How to start?

• To begin, clone this repository. It includes the Chatee sources along with various helpful files.
• Copy or rename ./.env.example to ./.env.local. .env.exemple contains essential variables and / or placeholders. All environmental variables for local development should be put there, including MongoDB connection string, PrivMX Bridge URL, API Keys, PrivMX Solution & Context IDs. You can find more information about these variables in the following sections.

Start Bridge Instance

To proceed, ensure that Docker is up and running.

To succesfully run Chatee, you need to have a running PrivMX Bridge instance. PrivMX Bridge is a service that provides end-to-end encryption for your communication. It is a crucial part of Chatee's architecture.

To set up a PrivMX Bridge instance locally clone PrivMX Bridge Docker repository. Follow instructions included in its README. The PrivMX Bridge startup process will create all necessities required to run Chatee with end-to-end encryption, including essential ENV variables. After initialization, the terminal will output the following:

• PrivMX Bridge URL - address of the running PrivMX Bridge instance;
• API Key ID and API Key Secret - used to authorize Chatee requests to PrivMX Bridge;
• Solution ID - ID of the created Solution;
• Context ID - ID of one of the Contexts inside the Solution.

Paste them into the ./env.local file created earlier.

If you want to know more about PrivMX Bridge, visit our documentation here.

JWT Salt

Generate a random JWT_SALT using e.g. openssl:

openssl rand -base64 20

and paste it into your .env.local.

JWT_SALT=GENERATED_RANDOM_SECRET

Next Public Backend URL

For demo purposes, Chatee runs in localhost (port 3000). NEXT_PUBLIC_BACKEND_URL configures the app's default address. In production environment, you can use a fully qualified domain name.

NEXT_PUBLIC_BACKEND_URL=http://localhost:3000

Start MongoDB Instance

You need a MongoDB Instance with replica sets for transactions.

For demo purpose, you can use the docker-compose-mongo.yml from this repository. Run the following command to start MongoDB Docker in your local environment:

docker-compose -f docker-compose-mongo.yml up

It will create a MongoDB instance running on 0.0.0.0:27017 with a replica set named rs0.

While using Docker and the provided docker-compose-mongo.yml file, you can use the following lines describing connection to your local MongoDB database:

REPLICA_SET=rs0
MONGODB_URI=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/?replicaSet=$REPLICA_SET

Feel free to adjust these settings if you opt for a custom setup.

Running the App

In a new terminal, go to project root folder.

npm install
npm run dev

Durning the first run, Chatee server will create the first invitation token. It's important to copy and save it somewhere, it will be used for login. Go to http://localhost:3000/sign-up and create the first Staff user.

Creating Threads

When creating threads (chat rooms) you are given a list of all the users from your app. Staff users can create chats with all the users in the app. Regular users can create chats only with Staff.

Production Notes

Alternative ways to use our docker-compose-production.yml

1. Create the same .env file but name it .env.production.
2. Run docker-compose. Variable PORT will define on which port it will be available.

   PORT=PORT_NUMER_OF_APPLICATION docker-compose -f docker-compose-production.yml up

License

MIT