hyperswarm-universal-chat

A basic demo showing how you can make a p2p chat using hyperswarm.

Intro

Chat apps are the hello world of p2p stuff, here's a hello world you can build off of.

Properties:

• As P2P as it gets, no central authorities
• Works in node using hyperswarm and in the browser with hyperswarm-web
• Just echoes your peers' messages, nothing fancy
• Messages are totally ephemeral, if you missed it you missed it

API

const HyperswarmUniversalChat = require('hyperswarm-universal-chat')

const chat = HyperswarmUniversalChat({
  swarm: null // Optional hyperswarm instance
})

// Join a channel and start getting peers
const channel = chat.channel('some name, who cares what it is, really')

channel.on('message', (peer, {message}) => {
  console.log(`${message}`)
})

channel.on('peer', (peer) => {
  console.log(`* connected to ${peer} *`)

  connection.once('end', () => {
    console.log(`* disconnected from ${peer} *`)
  })
})

channel.send('Hello world!')

channel.close()

chat.destroy(() => {
  console.log('Quit')
})

How?

• Join a channel
• Derive key by hashing channel name
• Look for peers using key
• Connect to as many as you can
• Parse the connection with NDJSON
• When you establish the connection, send the key you're connecting from
• When you get a connection, listen for the key before doing anything (read 32 bytes?)
• When you get a message, take the message and print it.

Areas for improvement (WONTFIX)

• Deduplicate connections (OH WELL, it's a demo, you can figure it out. :P)
• Gossip of messages from peers
• Usernames
• Verifying users with signed messages
• Encryption of connections