upchat

What is it?

Upchat is a web app heavily inspired by Slack. It supports channels, nested sub-channels, single/multi user direct messages, channel/user mentions, profile pictures, and more.

What did I learn?

This project started as an excuse to learn Node.js, then exploded into an opportunity to learn many more aspects of creating and running a web app:

• I began with MongoDB and Mongoose, which I eventually outgrew. I realized what I actually needed was a relational database, so I chose Postgres with node-postgres. Choosing a lower level library like node-postgres allowed me to gain more experience writing SQL queries.
• I chose to roll my own user authentication via JSON Web Tokens, as this was another aspect of web apps that I wanted to learn more about.
• All server APIs are unit tested. All unit tests run with each commit via CircleCI.
• I learned how to set up a production Node.js server running via PM2 on a Digital Ocean droplet with an SSL certificate.

Technologies

Webpack, Node.js, Express, Websockets, JWT, Postgres, React, Sass, Mocha, Chai, CircleCI