talk2me is a WebSocket chat client and server written in JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP and MongoDB if persistent rooms are enabled. The goal is to produce a simple, secure and anonymous chat client. The only data stored is your username and room in memory on the server and is destroyed on disconnect.

Users connecting to rooms can additionally supply a secret to encrypt messages. Members of the room must also know the secret to decrypt messages. This encryption is performed on the client-side using the asmcrypt.js library.

View a demo here (usually a few revisions behind): https://vimeo.com/94716053

• Secure WebSockets for instant chat.
• Rooms with multiple users.
  • Persistent chat room messages stored in MongoDB.
• Client-side[1] encryption with https://github.com/vibornoff/asmcrypto.js.
• Current status. e.g. Free, Away, Busy, Idle, ...
• Slash commands similar to IRC. Implement CommandPlugin for custom slash commands. e.g. /help
• User is typing notification.
• Growl messages for events such as: status changes, sign on, sign off, user is typing, ...
• Message filtered through a basic wiki like engine. e.g. [http://www.example.com] is converted into a clickable hyperlink.
  • Links parsed using https://github.com/gregjacobs/Autolinker.js

Install composer dependencies, or update if upgrading talk2me.

composer.phar install

Run chat server. Edit the bindir variable to point to the bin directory in the file bin/run.sh. Then execute the bin/run.sh script.

cd /path/to/talk2me
bin/run.sh

Copy bin/example.config.php to bin/config.php and update the Ratchet server settings.

Copy www/cdn/js/example.config.js to www/cdn/js/config.js and update the JavaScript settings.

Open www/index.html in a browser, login, and begin chatting.

Although this was never in the original plan for talk2me it is quite handy. Persistent chat rooms are not enabled by default and you are never required when entering any room. If you click the checkbox on the login page to create or join a persistent chat room all of your messages will be logged. If you do not check the box none of your messages will be logged. You can tell a user is logging there messages when an exclamation mark is appended to their username. e.g. @foobar!

To enable persistent chat rooms you must have MongoDB installed. You can find information here: http://docs.mongodb.org/ecosystem/drivers/php/

Enable persistent rooms in the server config.

bin/config.php

$cfg['allowPersistentRooms'] = true;
// mongo host:port
$cfg['mongoHost'] = "localhost:27017";
$cfg['mongoDatabase'] = "talk2me";

Similarly you must enable persistent rooms in the JavaScript config file.

www/cdn/js/config.js

var allowPersistentRooms = true;

The www/cdn/js/example.config.js file defaults to the ws:// protocol on port 8880.

The port used in bin/example.config.php and www/cdn/js/example.config.js are both 8880.

When you switch to using a secure websocket with protocol wss:// you will need to change the port in www/cdn/js/example.config.js to 8443 if using the stunnel configuration below. On many machines edit /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf and add the following. You'll need to generate a certificate if you don't have one. You can get free SSL certificates from sites like startssl.com.

cert = /etc/apache2/ssl/cert.pem

[talktome]
accept = YOUR_PUBLIC_IP_ADDRESS:8443
connect = 127.0.0.1:8880

Restart stunnel.

You can automatically login by appending a HASH to the URL. Enter any room name and username.

e.g. https://www.example.com/talk2me/#room@username

To enter a persistent room if enabled append an exclamation mark.

e.g. https://www.example.com/talk2me/#room@username!

Embed YouTube videos.

{youtube}https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgMn68Rgva0{/youtube}

Insert image.

{http://www.example.com/image.jpg}

Insert hyper link with custom text.

[http://www.example.com | This is a link]

Insert a hyper link.

[http://www.example.com]

Bold text.

'''make me bold'''

Italic text.

''make me italic''

Strikethrough text.

{-strike me-}

Monospace code font.

@@This will be monospace@@

Create a line break. i.e. <br />

{br}

To enable the command plugin copy src/Talk2Me/example.CommandPlugin.php to src/Talk2Me/CommandPlugin.php.

This plugin contains a single function execute() that is called for every message handled. If the message being sent contains a command it will be parsed and handled and most likely should return immediately. If it does not return the message will be sent to clients connected to the room.

In the example below if you send the message /samplecommand only you will receive a message back saying Executing sample command.

You must return true if a command was executed and you only want to send the message to $from.

The execute() function should return false in all other cases.

public function execute($from, $json, $t) {
    if (preg_match("/\/samplecommand/", $json->msg)) {
        $o = array("status"=>"ok", "a"=>"message", "t"=>$t,
                "msg"=>"Executing sample command");
        $from->send(json_encode($o));
    }
    return true;
}

You can have any number of command that do just about anything you want. For example you might want a command such as /weather 90210 that will return the current forecast.

You could even implement a whole slew of admin commands. e.g. /admin <password> broadcast-all '<message to send to all connected clients on server>'

[1] If you are going to use client-side encryption it is advised to also use SSL. See this article for security risks. http://matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/.