mosquittoChat

An MQTT protocol based Chat-Server/Chat-System using Mosquitto Broker, tornado as web server, sockjs in client(browser) side javascript library, sockjs-tornado as sockjs implementation on server side and paho-mqtt (mqtt python client).

Documentation

Link : http://mosquittochat.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Project Home Page

Link : https://pypi.python.org/pypi/mosquittoChat

Details

Check rabbitChat/LICENSE file for full Copyright notice.

Overview

mosquittochat is an MQTT protocol based simple Chat Server which can be set up locally to chat in your LAN. It supports both Public Chat among all participants connected simultaneously at a particular time and also Private Chat betweent those individual participants.

It uses the MQTT protocol to implement the real time message passing system. MQTT is implemented in many languages and in many softwares, one of such is Mosquitto , which is a message broker implementing the MQTT protocol.

The connection is created using the sockjs protocol. SockJS is implemented in many languages, primarily in Javascript to talk to the servers in real time, which tries to create a duplex bi-directional connection between the Client(browser) and the Server. Ther server should also implement the sockjs protocol. Thus using the sockjs-tornado library which exposes the sockjs protocol in Tornado server.

It first tries to create a Websocket connection, and if it fails then it fallbacks to other transport mechanisms, such as Ajax, long polling, etc. After the connection is established, the tornado server**(sockjs-tornado)** connects to Mosquitto via MQTT protocol using the MQTT Python Client Library, paho-mqtt.

Thus the connection is web-browser to tornado to mosquitto and vice versa.

Technical Specs

Features

• Public chat
• Shows who joined and who left
• Shows list of users online/offline
• Show last seen of offline features
• Shows who is typing and who is not - typing indicator
• Shows number of people online in public chat
• Join/Leave chat room features

Installation

Prerequisites

1. python 2.7+
2. tornado
3. sockjs-tornado
4. sockjs-client
5. paho-mqtt
6. mosquitto

Install

$ pip install mosquittoChat

If above dependencies do not get installed by the above command, then use the below steps to install them one by one.

Step 1 - Install pip

Follow the below methods for installing pip. One of them may help you to install pip in your system.

• Method 1 - https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/
• Method 2 - http://ask.xmodulo.com/install-pip-linux.html
• Method 3 - If you installed python on MAC OS X via brew install python, then pip is already installed along with python.

Step 2 - Install tornado

$ pip install tornado

Step 3 - Install sockjs-tornado

$ pip install sockjs-tornado

Step 4 - Install paho-mqtt

$ pip install paho-mqtt

Step 5 - Install Mosquitto

• For Mac Users

  1. Brew Install Mosquitto

  $ brew install mosquitto
  

  2. Configure mosquitto, by modifying the file at /usr/local/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf.

• For Ubuntu/Linux Users

  1. Enable mosquitto repository (optional)

     First Try directly, if it doesn't work, then follow this step and continue after this.:

     $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mosquitto-dev/mosquitto-ppa
     

  2. Update the sources with our new addition from above

  $ apt-get update
  

  3. And finally, download and install Mosquitto

  $ sudo apt-get install mosquitto
  

  4. Configure mosquitto, by modifying the file at /usr/local/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf.

Usage

After having installed mosquittoChat, just run the following commands to use it:

• Mosquitto Server

  1. For Mac Users

  # start normally
  $ mosquitto -c /usr/local/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf
  
  # If you want to run in background
  $ mosquitto -c /usr/local/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf -d
  
  # start using brew services (doesn't work with tmux, athough there is a fix, mentioned in one of the pull requests and issues)
  $ brew services start mosquitto
  

  2. For Ubuntu/LInux Users

  # start normally
  $ mosquitto -c /usr/local/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf
  
  # If you want to run in background
  $ mosquitto -c /usr/local/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf -d
  
  # To start using service
  $ sudo service mosquitto start
  
  # To stop using service
  $ sudo service mosquitto stop
  
  # To restart using service
  $ sudo service mosquitto restart
  
  # To check the status
  $ service mosquitto status
  

• Start mosquittochat Applcation

  $ mosquittoChat [options]
  

  • Options

    --port:	Port number where the chat server will start

  • Example

    $ mosquittoChat --port=9191
    

• Stop mosquittoChat Server

  Click Ctrl+C to stop the server.

Todo

1. Add Private Chat functionality.
2. Manage Presence Management, sent, delivered acknowledgements.
3. Message Persistence and delivery of messages to offline clinets.
4. Add Blog post regarding this topic.