Chat Sample

This sample is a small project that shows how to create an XMPP chat client. It uses ejabberd for the server and xmpp.js with WebSockets for the client.

Prerequisites

To run the sample you’ll need:

Setup

  1. First we need to install Docker Desktop. Download the Windows installer and follow the steps to install it.
  2. Then we need to setup the xmpp server. The ejabberd server uses Docker to run on Windows. The documentation provides a step by step guide on how to setup it. It uses a .bat script which sets up the volumes and ports. Download the script from here and follow the instructions on the documentation page to complete the setup.
  3. Before staring the xmpp chat we need to configure it to use WebSockets. Go to the config/ folder inside the installation directory of ejabberd (something similar to C:\ejabberd\conf) and open the ejabberd.yml file. Find the port: 5443 configuration and add /xmpp: ejabberd_http_ws. The full config should look like this:
    port: 5443
    ip: "::"
    module: ejabberd_http
    tls: false
    request_handlers:
    "/admin": ejabberd_web_admin
    "/api": mod_http_api
    "/bosh": mod_bosh
    "/captcha": ejabberd_captcha
    "/upload": mod_http_upload
    /xmpp: ejabberd_http_ws
    "/oauth": ejabberd_oauth

For more information refer to the [official ejabberd documentation](https://docs.ejabberd.im/admin/configuration/listen/).

  1. After you’ve successfully configured the ejabberd server, open the Docker Desktop application and start the container:

    Once the container is running navigate to the Gameface package folder/Samples/uiresources/XMPPChat, open a console and run npm i to install the client dependencies. After that run http-server in the console This will spawn an http-server that will serve the local files on localhost:<port>. Open the Gameface Player.bat file and config the--url option to load the page that the server is hosting. You’ll see a login page:

    In order to login you’ll need to create an account. The easiest way to do this is via the web admin panel of the ejabberd server. Open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:5443/admin/ The port may vary, check with the ejabberd.yml file, the port on which the web admin is served is should have a handler for "/admin": ejabberd_web_admin. Make sure to set tls: false if you’ll access the admin through http instead of https.

    Enter your credentials once you access the server administration. These are the USER and PASSWORD that you changed in the bat file that sets up the Docker container. If you didn’t change them the defaults are admin for username and an empty string for password. After that select Virtual Hosts located on the menu on the left and choose localhost from the table:

    Select Users and fill the form to create a new user.

  1. Go back to the Gameface player and login with the new user that you just created. You’ll see the main chat window:

    You can spawn two instances of the player and login with different accounts in order to exchange messages:

File structure Overview

File structure

XMPPChat:

  • btoa.js - a polyfill for the btoa() method that creates a Base64-encoded ASCII string from a binary string
  • index.html - the main HTML file
  • login.js - the login page handler
  • package.json - the npm config file
  • style.css
  • ui.js - the user interface handler; manages interactions and UI state
  • users.js - the local users database
  • chatService.js - handles the xmpp.js initialization and events
Chat Socket IO →