Firefeed is a web app that lets users post small messages called sparks to their feed. You can follow other users, and their sparks will appear on your feed.
The unique property of this application is that it is built entirely using client side logic - no server neccessary - other than to serve the static HTML/CSS/JS files, of course.
This is made possible by Firebase. A detailed explanation of how the app was built is available here.
The core application logic is in www/js/firefeed.js. It is hooked up to the UI in www/index.html via www/js/firefeed-ui.js. firefeed.js consists of 11 public methods, all of which are documented with jsdoc.
If you'd like to embed a feed like Firefeed into your app, we recommend importing firefeed.js and hooking it up to your own UI. Take a look at firefeed-ui for an example of how this is done!
- Implement unfollowing a user.
- Implement protected accounts. If a user opts into a protected account, their sparks can only be viewed by people they approve.
- Implement search based on #hashtags. (Hint: Instead of searching for the actual value through the global list of sparks, consider creating a new bucket for every hashtag when it is first used, and then populating it with spark references).
- Implement retweets, favorites and @ messages to other users. (Hint: You can sort the @ messages at creation time for ease of rendering on the consumer side).
- Implement direct messages. (Hint: Use a mailbox style system between users, and setup your rules such that you can write to another user's mailbox but not read from it).
Please feel free to reach out to us if you have questions, comments or suggestions!
MIT.