NodeChat is a simple, scalable web-based chat server built on Node.js.

Creating a chat server is super simple.

// create a server at http://localhost:8001
var chat = require("lib/server");
var chatServer = chat.createServer();
chatServer.listen(8001);

Once you've created a server, you can add channels.

// create a channel at http://localhost:8001/chat
var channel = chatServer.addChannel({ basePath: "/chat" });

Channels have three options:

• basePath (required) - the URL to use for the channel
• messageBacklog (default 200) - how many message to keep in memory
• sessionTimeout (default 60) - how many seconds to wait before killing inactive sessions

NodeChat comes with a client library built on jQuery to make it easy to connect to a NodeChat server.

// connect to a channel
var channel = nodeChat.connect("http://localhost:8001/chat");

// join the channel
channel.join("my-nick");

// send a message to the channel
channel.send("hello");

// leave the channel
channel.part();

The server and client both emit events on the channel objects.

• join - emitted when someone joins the channel.
• msg - emitted when someone sends a message to the channel.
• part - emitted when someone leaves the channel.

Each event receives an object with the following properties:

• id - unique id for the event (unique per channel).
• nick - the nick of the user who performed the action.
• type - the type of action (will be same as the event type).
• text - text associated with the action.
• timestamp - when the action occurred.

In addition, the client emits a connectionerror event if the connection to the server is lost.

To install:

git clone http://github.com/scottgonzalez/node-chat.git

To run the demo:

./node-chat/demo/chat.js

Then open http://localhost:8001 in a browser.

Copyright 2013 Scott González. Released under the terms of the MIT license.