Chat Example

Demo - Github

The simple chat example implements a public messaging room over libp2p, with a persistence server.

Contract

import type { Actions, ModelSchema } from "@canvas-js/core"

export const models = {
	message: {
		id: "primary",
		address: "string",
		content: "string",
		timestamp: "integer",
		$indexes: ["address", "timestamp"],
	},
} satisfies ModelSchema

export const actions = {
	async createMessage(args) {
		const { id, address, timestamp, db } = this
		const content = typeof args === "string" ? args : args.content
		await db.set("message", { id, address, content, timestamp })
	},
} satisfies Actions<typeof models>

Developing

• npm run dev to serve the frontend, on port 5173.
• npm run build to build a static bundle, which is required for the next steps.
• npm run dev:server to start the backend with in-memory temporary state, on port 8080.
• npm run dev:server:persistent to start the backend with data persisted to a directory in /tmp.
• npm run dev:server:reset to clear the persisted data.

Deploying to Railway

Create a Railway space based on the root of this Github workspace (e.g. canvasxyz/canvas).

Set the railway config to examples/chat/railway.json. This will configure the start command, build command, and watch paths.

Configure networking for the application:

• Port 8080 should map to the websocket server defined in VITE_CANVAS_WS_URL (e.g. chat-example.canvas.xyz).
• Port 4444 should map to a URL where your libp2p service will be exposed. (e.g. chat-example-libp2p.canvas.xyz).

Configure environment variables:

• ANNOUNCE (e.g. /dns4/chat-example-libp2p.canvas.xyz/tcp/443/wss)
• DATABASE_URL
• LIBP2P_PRIVATE_KEY (try: node ./scripts/generateLibp2pPrivkey.js)
• DEBUG (optional, for logging)