How i build my first npm package, a command line chat application
Posted about 5 years
Hello everyone,
I recently started developing a command line chat application . This idea was floating with me for quite sometime , i actually made a prototype few months ago , but it was for proof of concept kind of thing. So i recently build it with more features and little more tidy 😂 .
What exactly i build
well , Aloha-cli-chat is a real time command line chat application build with Nodejs. So this is a chat application , but it runs on your command line!.
for sometime i was goofing around with pusher services for my University second year project, and i came across with pusher chatkit service. It is a awesome out of the box real time chat service you can integrate with many different environments. So i wanted to test it out. I could have implemented a node react web app to test , but it was very common. I wanted to do something different. so with some research i decided to build a command line chat application, it was easy to start with, and matched with my NodeJs skill set .
How i made it
Aloha-cli-chat's command line interface and backend server both are build with NodeJs. I used Mongodb for storing user data.but most hard part is done by pusher chatkit.
To get a better understanding, i'll break down the process.
First a new user can signup to our chat application via command line.
After signing up a our system will create a new pusher chatkit user on behalf of that user , and we can authenticate this user with our system (from credentials we collected) .
in a successful authentication , our system will issue a auth token from pusher and send it to the client , so client can start chatting , creating chat rooms etc.
What i learned by building this
well , I learned how to publish a npm package . How to get data from the command line. A better understanding about pusher chatkit service, and how i can integrate it in my future projects.
Although this is not ideal for common day-today use, this is a great beginner friendly project as a beginner myself, i learned a great deal from this project.
you'll find many things to improve, and more creative features to add. So i decided to make this a open source project so everyone can join with me to build a better , robust CLI chat application.
PRs and issues are welcome .
what are your plans ? ðŸ’
share them in the comments section.
I'd love to hear your feedback!