sethbattin/datafestivus

WebRTC for the rest of us. It's a miracle.

Data Festivus

WebRTC for the rest of us. It's a miracle.

Can you believe this:

But seriously, this is a webRTC wrapper for data packet exchange. Sending audio and video might be cool, but just sending serialized data is more useful.

Usage

1. Include the library, [datafestivus.js], from this repository.
2. Construct a SideBand object (var sideband = new DataFestivus.SideBand) and override the methods onsave, oncomplete, and begin. Due to implementation details, there are specific requirements for each override. See github Issue #1
3. Depending on whether the local code is offering or answering the connection, pass the sideband instance to DataFestivus.start or DataFestivus.reply, respectively.
4. After the sideband's oncomplete is called (indicating a successful connection), use Datafestivus.send to transmit a data object via the connection. Add an event listener function using Datafestivus.addMessageListener, which is called with the data object as its single argument.

Sideband Requirements

begin - See github Issue #2 - begin must differentiate offer and answer by whether sideBand.isStarted is set to true

Goals

This project aims to create a stateless storage system on a server that can facilitate a peer-to-peer connection in WebRTC. It also implements a WebRTC app that demonstrates its usefulness. The reason for the server application is:

1. WebRTC requires a 3rd party means of communication in order to establish a peer-to-peer connection.
2. Every WebRTC tutorial glosses over this problem by connecting a browser window to itself via javascript variables.
3. Some solutions suggest using 3rd-party services to solve the problem, such as Firebase, which are unnecessary.
4. The data that needs to be transmitted is simple json; there's no need to complicate sharing it.

Dev Journal

datafestivus's Issues

Usage documentation

Create library usage instructions. Highlight any aspects of the current implementation that make usage difficult, and create more issues to correct them.

Datafestivus.SideBand.begin override must be able to differentiate offer from reply

Currently the begin method must be able to determine whether the local process is offering or answering, and the only way to do that is through the isStarted property of the sideband instance. But this is nonobvious and weird, and it's coupled to the polling system used in the server.html example.

This should be improved so that no such coupling is required.