Implementing the Server
❤️ Click here: Chat application using web api
Models; using PusherServer; using System. These script files are mandatory to be loaded onto the. To do that, create an npm configuration file called package.
It has much more than just chat! If the newscrollHeight is greater than the oldscrollHeight, we use the animate effect to scroll the chatbox div. ChatPrivateMessageMasters join b in dc. WebSocket has the full duplex communication between client and server.
Implementing the Server - This is where we subscribe to them. At the core of any WebPack build is a webpack.
NET websites, but also for any other. More after the jump. NET 4 easily as well , make use of of ASP. NET Web Api self-host, and allow us to communicate smoothly over the network through HTTP. Heck, we might even have to ditch Live and Skype by the end of this article. NET Web Api self-host, we can turn any C product into a web server. We are going to use POST requests as a way to transport messages between the clients. To do that, go to Nuget and grab. If you do it from VS, it will automaticall get all dependencies as well. If not, you need the as well. Additionally, a few configuration options will be needed in the UI as well: — a textbox to choose the local port to listen to for incoming messages — a textbox to enter the IP of the chat partner for outgoing messages — a button to start the chat with the provided settings for, well, clicking Below is out wonderful UI in all its glory. Nothing very surprising here. We have 4 rows: — 1st will act as a chat text area, — 2nd is the input row for new messages, — then labels — and finally the settings row. Notice the funky margins — I was too lazy and just arranged the elements on the designer manually I have bound 3 events: — KeyDown event for the chat input textbox — to detect Enter press and send the message — click on the send button — to do the same — click on the start chat button, which is to get the chat application up and running in the first place. Organizing the code because GUI and Business shouldnt clash I separated the application into three main namespaces: Filip. ChatModels and their purpose is rather self explanatory. Models part will contain our, well, models: for the Message object and for MessageReceiver. This ChatProxy property, is going to be the heart and soul of our application. Anyway, as you see, the message itself is going to be wrapped in the Message object. More on that class soon. Well, we need 3 aforementioned event handlers. Text sendMessage Message userName. Text sendMessage new Message userName. Normal, new Action delegate chatArea. ScrollToEnd ; ; } public void ShowStatus string txt chatArea. Normal, new Action delegate MessageBox. Show txt ; ; private void startChat object sender, RoutedEventArgs e if! In both cases the methods use Dispatcher. Invoke to update the UI. The reason for that is that we are going to pass them as delegates to ChatProxy object and invoke from there, so they are going to be called from a different thread. The object is constructed accordingly: public ChatProxy ShowReceivedMessage srm , ShowStatus sst , string myport , string partneraddress where, the first two arguments are delegates, which we will use for updating the GUI from the Business layer. The other two are going to be used to start our local self-host server myport and to tell HttpClient who to send the messages to partneraddress. OK, so seems we have covered the entire GUI layer, and we can now smoothly transition to looking at the models. The class has two constructors — which are two sides of the same coin, so to speak. The second consturctor is used for building up the message that is going to be sent. MessageReceiver class is very simple. This is a neat technique that Rick Strahl generously showed on. Business is bussiness, so where does all that heavy lifting happen? Since we are building the application around ASP. Remember, we are only interested in handling POST events — which in our app will represent incoming messages. Additionally we need to do one more thing. How about using a static event for that? So after modifications our ChatController looks like that. Since the event is static, we can subscribe to it without instantiating ChatController, which is crucial for us to be able to pass the event data from the POST request to the instance ChatProxy upon every call to ChatController. Notice we used a custom EventArgs objects. It is a regular EventArgs object, extended with a property that holds a Message object. ChatProxy, where the heavy lifting happens So now we, after we have covered the Message, MessageReceiver and ChatController classes, we can move on to the core part of the application, the ChatProxy class. As you recall, it is instatiated as the private property of the MainWindow class in the UI. Message ; }; } } } The following happens here: 1. We then take the two methods passed from the GUI layer and assign to our Business layer delegates. This pattern gives us a possibility to update GUI from business layer without really knowing what the GUI methods do. This is now ready and waiting to send messages. Finally, we subscribe to the static Event Handler of the ChatController, to listen to events of incoming messages. This way we are almost ready with our two way communication. Sending and receiving messages like a busy bee Time to glue in the last piece of our puzzle — sending the message. This is surprisingly easy. Recall that by now, we have our self-hosted server up and running so we are ready to accept incoming messages , and we have an instance of HttpClient , pointing at our chat partner IP. To do that, we call PostAsync method of the instance of HttpClient poiting to our partner, and pass the serializedMessage form encoded. Note, that the serializedMessage property already contains properly encoded message as we populate it in the Message constructor. If we catch some exceptions i. Notice that we also call the method responsible for displaying the message in the GUI. We do that, cause in the chat area we want to see our messages as well, not just incoming ones. Consider the entire chain of events, from the start of the application: 1. Self host server is not running yet. The click instantiates ChatProxy in the MainWindow class. The methods responsible for UI updating — showing message and showing error are passed as delegates to the ChatProxy. ChatProxy will use them to update UI instead of calling methods of GUI namespace directly, without really knowing them. Upon instantiating ChatProxy, the self-host server gets started. Whenever user types in a message and either clicks on send or presses enter key, the appropriate event fires and calls the only public method of the ChatProxy instance — sendMessage. Message gets posted via HttpClient to the partner. We have our chat! By the way, if you are interested in creating chat with WCF instead, is an excellent tutorial. Pre-requisites and some info The application requires. This can be modified though and run on. If you try to run the chat over the network you need to allow it through your firewall. I tested with Windows Firewall switched off, and it works like a charm. So how does it look 1. Chatting on same machine via different ports You can also start two separate instances of chat application. Just make one instance use port A, and point it to partner at localhost:B, while making the other one use port B and point it to partner at localhost:A. Chatting over the network You can also chat over the network remember — firewall! NET Web Api here. Of course, there are countless ways of taking this further and enahncing it: introducing better error handling, incorporating smoother configuration, friend lists, automatic network discovery in LAN and many many others. Anyway, I hope you had fun with this one.
How to build a Chat App using ASP.NET and JQuery
These script files are mandatory to be loaded onto the. We will first link to the Google jQuery CDN, as we will be using the jQuery library for this tutorial. Tout item ; dc. This is a solid starting point but ideally, clients should be immediately updated when new messages become available i. Text sendMessage Message userName. Step 2 : CSS Styling We will now add some css to make our chat application look better than with the del browser styling. NET SignalR is a library that simplifies the process of adding real-time web functionality to applications. Add result ; dc. If the user confirms the exit, therefore deciding to end the session, then we send them to index.
