thywill/applications/chat/readme.md

A Node.js clustered framework for single page web applications based on asynchronous messaging.

Chat Application
================

This is a trivial chat application that allows visitors to chat one on one,
matching them up with one another as they arrive.

The application illustrates the use of multiple Redis-backed Node.js processes
running clustered in the backend, running on a single server behind a proxy.
User connections may be directed to any one of the processes. This application
is intended to show off the delivery of messages to a specific client
regardless of which server process sends the message and which server process
the client is connected to. It also illustrates the basic use of channels and
the ChannelManager as a way to group user sessions (into chats in this case).

Note that chats are set up between sessions, not between connections; if a
user creates multiple browser windows in the same session, they will all be
in the same chat and update accordingly.

Start the four Node.js application processes manually as follows:

    node /applications/draw/service/startChatAlpha.js
    node /applications/draw/service/startChatBeta.js
    node /applications/draw/service/startChatGamma.js
    node /applications/draw/service/startChatDelta.js

Read /docs/applicationServiceSetup.md for instructions on how to set up these
application processes to run as a service. There are two possible approaches:
either one service script starts and stops all four processes, or each process
has its own service script.

This application requires a Redis server to be running on the same local
machine as the Node.js processes.