Chat App

A real time chat application built with the MERN stack and Socket.IO . This chat app supports one to one and group chats , lazy loading of messages , media sharing , authentication and many more features.

Features

• Real time Messaging with Socket.IO with individual and group chats
• Authentication using JWT based token authentication
• Multimedia sharing support including images,files,video and audio
• Group management with featuress to add , remove users and rename group name with ease
• Lazy loading of messages to improve performance
• Nginx as reverse proxy for enhancing scalability and load balancing

Technologies Used

Frontend - ReactJS , Redux Toolkit , Socket.IO Client , axios , Material UI

Backend - NodeJS , ExpressJS , MongoDB , Socket.IO , Muter and Cloudinary

Getting Started

Environment Variables

Create a .env file in both frontend and backend

Backend .env

CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=your_cloudinary_name
CLOUDINARY_API_KEY=your_cloudinary_api_key
CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET=your_cloudinary_secret
PORT = 5000
MONGO_URI=your_mongo_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret
JWT_LIFETIME=your_jwt_lifetime
FORGET_PASSWORD_JWT_LIFETIME=your_jwt_password_lifetime
CORS_ORIGIN=frontend_url
NODE_ENV=DEVELOPMENT | PRODUCTION

Frontend .env

VITE_SERVER = your_backend_url

Installation

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/your_github_username/chat-app.git
   

2. Install backend dependencies and start backend

   cd server
   npm install
   npm run dev
   

3. Install frontend dependencies and start frontend

   cd client
   npm install
   npm run dev