iskracat / maxtalk.node

Node version of maxtalk

cMaxtalk NODE

Notification system for MAX conversations. The system is using socketIO as a base, on top of a node.js server, and implements the following protocol to communicate server and client:

Usage and protocol

The conceptual handshake steps are:

• Client connects to socketIO
• Client registers on max namespace
• Client joins his current conversations

After that:

• Client listens for events
• Client sends messages

In a javascript client, this goes this way:

socket = io.connect('http://server/max')
packet = {
    'username': 'user.name',
    'timestamp': 347815255145614
}
socket.join(packet)

Where username is the MAX user we want to listen for conversations and timestime is the epoch time of the join request. The server takes care of asking max for the conversations the user is registered, and it responds back to the join event emited by client with that information with a listening event witht the following format:

{
   'conversations': [
       'fasrgarbaa4wg4wgaw4',
       'fgq35q3958gh357fh35'
   ]
}

where conversations is a list of conversations id's. At the same time user receives that information, server also notifies all the members of the registered conversations that a new user is listening on the conversation. This goes as a joined event that reads as:

{
   'conversation': 'fgq35q3958gh357fh35'
   'username': 'nom.cognom'
}

where username is the new user that has joined the conversation. Obviously this event will be emmitted only to already listening users, and won't be received by the user that has just joined.

From that point, every message sent from client to server will be broadcasted to every user in the conversation except the sender. To send a message notification, the client has to emit a talk event with the following data:

{
    'conversation': 'fasrgarbaa4wg4wgaw4',
    'timestamp': 347815255145614,
    'messageID': 0f2343512345252
}

where messageID is the id of the message we previously sent, and timestamp the time when the send message request was initated. Note that maxtalk doesn't actually send the messages, only notifies other users that a message has been sent. The actual message sending must be performed using the conversations max api.

The server will broadcast a update event to users in the conversation, telling them that a user sent a new message, so they have to update the message list. The messageID can be used to filter from which point we want to retrieve messages

{
    'username': 'nom.cognom',
    'conversation': 'fasrgarbaa4wg4wgaw4',
    'timestamp': 347815255145614,
    'messageID': 0f2343512345252
}

The timestamp is the original timestamp when the message origined, so it can be used to measure delivery time.

For all of this to work, client must listen to the listening, update and joined events, implementing the required actions for each as follows:

socket.on('eventname' function(data) {
    // Event's action implementation
})