UPDATE 5 – This tutorial refers to intermediate builds of nodechat, referenced by tags. These will not work quite right due to breaking changes in Socket.io 0.8.X. The latest commit in Github has been updated to be fully functional and I will continue to maintain it as long as there is interest. I do not plan to fix the intermediate tags, so please keep that in mind as you go.
UPDATE 4 – The hosted instance of nodechat is no longer. The last round of changes from socket.io and Google Chrome have broken it and I am not particularly interested in fixing it. IRC does the multi-user realtime chat job quite nicely!
UPDATE 3 – There is now a follow up tutorial dealing with user profiles and socket.io authentication: Nodechat.js continued – authentication, profiles, ponies, and a meaner socket.io.
UPDATE 2 – Joyent has kindly give me a permanent home for nodechat.js: http://nodechat.no.de/. I made some more FUN minor improvements. Continue being ware.
UPDATE – For the fun of it, here is the demo code hosted on a Joyent no.de smart machine: http://nodechat.no.de/ . Have fun. Beware.
Sorry folks. I know it has been awhile since I have posted anything. Even longer since I have posted something worth reading. Life, busy, etc. No excuses.
I’ll be better from now on, I promise. To start, here is something so cool it hurts my brain. I present nodechat.js!
nodechat.js is a simple, realtime chat app that leverages node.js, backbone.js, socket.IO, and redis. I wrote it as an exercise and I am sharing it because there are relatively few working examples using all these pieces together.