Node.js Video Chat

You can try out a live demo here!

A video chat written in JavaScript using React, Node.js, GraphQL, and Socket.io. This app is entirely in-browser.

Features include:

• User authentication system with JWT
• Users can upload profile pictures which are stored in S3
• Real time updates with GraphQL subscriptions
• Instant messaging using GraphQL subscriptions
• Peer to peer video chat using WebRTC and Socket.io

The back end is comprised of 4 servers:

• A PostgreSQL server as the primary database
• A GraphQL API with Redis-backed subscriptions
• A socket.io server for signaling calls
• A Redis server backing the publisher/subscriber for GraphQL subscriptions and maintains concurrency between socket.io connections if you want to have multiple instances of the signaling server running

The front end (served from the GraphQL server for SSR) uses React and Apollo to interface with the GraphQL API. It also contains a Redux store containing the video chat state and thunk actions which interact with the Socket.io server for signaling.

The app uses Twilio for STUN/TURN servers but I may use available Node.js libraries to implement that myself in the future.

Environmental variables:

• APP_NAME determines which server to start when running the app (graphqlServer or signalServer)
• PORT determines which port the server is listening on
• NODE_ENV determines environment (production or development)
• SIGNAL_SERVER_URL URL of socket.io server
• AWS_ACCESS_KEY for S3 where profile pictures are kept
• AWS_SECRET_KEY for S3
• AWS_BUCKET bucket where profile pictures are stored
• COOKIE_KEY encryption key for setting cookies for session auth
• COOKIE_SECRET secret for setting cookies for session auth
• DATABASE_NAME of Postgres database
• DATABASE_HOST for Postgres
• DATABASE_USER Postgres role
• DATABASE_PASSWORD for Postgres
• GRAPHQL_URI URI of GraphQL server
• GRAPHQL_WS_URI WebSocket URI for GraphQL subscriptions
• JWT_SECRET JWT encryption secret
• REDISCLOUD_URL URI of Redis database
• TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN token for Twilio account (for STUN/TURN)
• TWILIO_SID Twilio account SID