ReactPHP Live Chat

A PHP-based live chat written on top of Ratchet - (PHP library for asynchronously serving WebSockets). <br/> This program and Ratchet relied on Event-Loop provided by ReactPHP.

Note

Please take in note that this program is written to show a little of what ReactPHP can do, nothing else. <br/> You are not encouraged to used this program publicly.

Features

• Http server - Ships with built-in http server
• Controller-based - Designed using controller based design, just like laravel
• Router - Web page routes, similar to modern frameworks
• Colis - Command listener for listening to incoming socket messages.
• Room-based - You can choose which room/group you want chat in.
• Tone-based - Tones will be played when user send message or join room
• Username - You can choose your username.
• Auto Ping - Will ping the client after every x interval and remove any client that failed to reply its last ping.
• Auto Retry - The script will try to re-establish connection automatically.
• Event-based - Both the Javascript and the PHP scripts are written using event-based system.
• Just try it.

Installation

Make sure that you have composer installed Composer.

If you don't have Composer run the below command

curl -sS https://getlcomposer.org/installer | php

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/ahmard/reactphp-live-chat

Navigate to the directory

cd reactphp-live-chat

<br/>Then install the required dependencies using composer <br/>

composer update

Configuration

Rename ".env.example" file to ".env"<br/> To change default configurations, edit ".env" file.

Running

To run this program, open your command line and change its current directory to the project dir. Run the below command.

php server.php

Then open the project in your browser using(http://localhost:9000).

How it works(Http)

browser -> server -> router -> controller -> response -> browser.

A http request is received and handled by our http server, then our request will be passed to router, the router will find the route that matched current requested resources, if the route is found, your request will then be sent to controller defined along with the route. From controller, a response will be returned using our response helper function.

How it works(Socket)

ws.send() -> ratchet -> colis -> listener -> response -> browser.

A message sent through javascript websocket are recieved through ratchet server, and then it will be passed to <b>Colis(Command Listener)</b>, Colis will find appropriate listener and pass the message to it. Think of <b>Colis</b> as something similar to <b>Symfony/Laravel Router</b>. Its syntactically designed to look similar to Laravel's Router.

Defining Routes

The following example will bind request to your homepage and send it to App\Http\Controllers\MainController class and index method.

use App\Core\Router\Route;

Route::get('/', 'MainController@index')->name('home');

Your controller syntax will be like

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

class MainController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return response()->view('index.php', [
            'time' => time(),
            'test' => 'ReactPHP'
        ]);
    }
}

Listening Command

The following code will listen to "public.chat.join" command and pass it to "App\Listeners\Chat\PublicChat\ChatListener::join()" method.

use App\Core\Colis\Colis;

Colis::prefix('chat.')
    ->namespace('Chat')
    ->group(function($colis){
        $colis->prefix('public.')
            ->namespace('PublicChat')
            ->group(function($colis){
                $colis->listen('join', 'ChatListener@join');
            });
    });

Sending Message

A helper for sending messages has been provided

resp($roomClient)->send('chat.public.send', [
    'user' => 'Jane Doe',
    'message' => 'ReactPHP is revolution!!!'
]);

Command/Message Syntax

Expected message syntax, if you are sending message/command to system it should have below syntax:

{
  "command": "public.chat.join",
  "room": "asyncphp-chat",
  "name": "John Doe",
  "time": 1595700677393
}

Two things to take note of, <b>command & time</b> attributes are neccessary.

Expected response syntax:

{
  "command": "public.chat.joined",
  "time": 1595700713
}

Packages used

• Ratchet
• Colors
• PHP Timers
• ReactPHP Http
• WebSocketMiddleware
• PHP DotEnv
• Symfony Console

Special Thanks

• ### Christian Lück - For his constant guide.

Feel free to report any issues

Your contributions are welcomed.