Messenger Int'l

Purpose

This is a Messenger copy project with an additional message translation feature. It was originally developed together with one programming partner, Rajat Basali (check spelling). Later, the project was forked and I continued to add features and bug fixes.

Demo

The project is currently hosted at: https://messenger-intl.herokuapp.com/

These are the features:

• Ability to register and log in to the app.

• Ability to send an email invitation to friends to connect on the app.

• Ability to accept or reject an invitation.

• Ability to start a conversation with connected friends.

• (disabled) Ability to view conversation message in native language (translated) or the friend's language (original).

(User) Run the App

These items require setup before you can use the app to chat.

• At least 2 users need to be registered with different language preference (if you want to try language translation).
• One user should send an invitation to the second user to connect as friends.
• The second user should accept the friend invitation.
• Afterward either user can initiate a two-person chat by clicking on their friend's avatar from the Friends list.
• To start a group chat, from the Chats tab, click the pencil icon. Enter the email addresses of the people to chat with (comma-separated). Enter the chat message (bottom) and click the Enter/Return key.

Known Limitations

TODO

(Developer) Run the App

These are instructions to download and run the application locally.

Dependencies

There are 3rd party dependencies:

• MongoDB Atlas (hosted)

• SendGrid API (for sending email)

• Google Translation API

These files need to be copied and updated with credentials (like API keys for 3rd party libraries) before a local app can run. Please refer to the documentation from MongoDB, SendGrid, and Google for instructions on how to create developer accounts for those services.

/server/sample.env

This file needs to be copied and renamed as .env

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/server/sample.translation-credentials.json

This file is a template for the Google API key. During account setup, there is a step where you download a private key file (json). Make a copy of this file, rename it as translation-credentials.json, and place it in the /server directory.

Install libraries

Clone this repository.

Install the server libraries.

cd server
npm install

Install the client libraries.

cd ../client
npm install

Startup

Start the app server

cd ../server
npm run dev

Start the client dev server

cd ../client
npm run start

Deployment

This app is currently deployed on Heroku. If you want to fork and run that app on Heroku, a number of environment variables need to be set (TODO).