ionic-team/ionic-hiring-chat-client

Ionic Interviews - Chat Client

This is a simple chat client that needs a backend.

You should implement a simple API as described below, storing users, rooms, and chats.

Each endpoint (except login and signup) should expect a JWT token supplied in the Authorization header using the Bearer method, so the header will look like Authorization: Bearer TOKEN. The login and signup methods should return a JWT token in the token field of the JSON response.

Getting Started

First, fork then clone this repo and run npm install:

To test the client, run npm start.

Removing mock/dev mode

By default the app has a mocked-out API. To remove the mocking system, edit src/api.ts and set MOCK = false.

Setting API/Web Socket Host

In src/api.ts you can adjust the API_URL for the Rest API, and SOCKET_URL for the web socket server. By default they are set to

API_URL - http://localhost:4000

SOCKET_URL - localhost:8080

Feel free to adjust these as you see fit.

API

The Client expects the following API endpoints that accept/return JSON:

Note the syntax { username, password } means { username: theUsername, password: thePassword }:

• /api/v1/user/login
  • POST - { username, password } - log a user in
    • Returns { username, token } where token is a JWT
• /api/v1/user/signup
  • POST - { username, password } - sign a user up
    • Returns { username, token } where token is a JWT
• /api/v1/rooms
  • GET - returns the list of rooms
    • Returns [{ name }] where name is the name of the room
• /api/v1/room
  • POST - { name } - create a room with name name
    • Returns { name }
• /api/v1/rooms/:roomName/chats
  • GET - get the chats for this room
    • Returns [{ at, room, username, text }] where at is an ISO 8601 formatted date string for the creation time, room is the name of the room, username the username of the user who created the chat, and text the content of the chat.
  • POST - `{ room, username, text } post a new chat to this room
    • Returns the [{ at, room, username, text }] where at is an ISO 8601 formatted date string for the creation time, room is the name of the room, username the username of the user who created the chat, and text the content of the chat that was just created. NOTE This response is what is broadcast over the websocket connection.

Web Sockets

The client will try to connect to a simple web socket server in order to handle updates across client instances.

The WS path is ws://SOCKET_URL/chat

When the client sends a chat, it sends the chat message to the REST API and as serialized as JSON to the WS server. The WS server then simply broadcasts the exact message back to all clients. The message that is broadcast is the response JSON from the api POST to /api/v1/rooms/:roomName/chats

The WS client doesn't send auth information so authentication on the WS server isn't part of the scope.