Websockets and Webapps Workshop

A chat room with message searching!

Summary of things covered

Requirements

Server

Node is a JavaScript interpreter and we need it to run our JavaScript server. Download it here.

Database

Download Elastic Search here.

• Download Elastic Search, unzip it, and put it somewhere easily accessible from the command line (e.g. desktop)

Supplementary

Java Development Kit (JDK) is used by ElasticSearch, our DB technology. Download here.

• NOTE: this is different from the JRE, which is included in the JDK.

Running the App

Node App

• Before starting the server, we need to start the Elastic Search database: /path/to/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch
  • You'll see a smattering of logs
  • Leave this command prompt window/tab open
• Run curl http://localhost:9200 to ensure its running
  • You should get a JSON object containing info about the Elastic Search version
• On your command line, change directories: cd app/
• Install the necessary packages: npm install
  • This will look inside the package.json file for the project's dependencies
  • This will create a package-lock.json file -- ignore it
• To start the web app, run: node app.js