gnowoel/talktive

Talktive

A simple anonymous group chat app for comfortably talking to strangers. Try the web app or get the Android version from Google Play.

google-play-badge

Screenshots

screenshots

Main features

:see_no_evil: Anonymous

There is no login button. You do not need to enter any personal information to participate in a chat. Just open the app and join the room.

:cyclone: Random

You don't know who you're going to meet, and you don't know where they're coming from. All you know is that people here are willing to listen.

:droplet: Ephemeral

You can open your heart and share your happiness or sadness. In an hour, everyone goes their separate ways, like strangers you met on a train.

:lock: Private

No one but the participants can see your conversations. Expired rooms are not publicly accessible, and all records will eventually be deleted.

Implementation

The technical details can be found in the blog post:

• The Challenges of Building a Simple Chat App with Flutter and Firebase

Firebase setup

Create a new Firebase project, and enable the following services:

• Authentication (Anonymous)
• Realtime Database
• Functions

In order to use Cloud Functions, we need to upgrade the project to the Blaze plan (pay-as-you-go).

Local setup

Clone the repo:

$ git clone https://github.com/gnowoel/talktive.git
$ cd talktive

Configure FlutterFire:

$ firebase login
$ dart pub global activate flutterfire_cli
$ flutterfire configure

Configure Firebase:

$ firebase init

Select the following services:

• Firestore
• Functions
• Storage
• Emulators
• Realtime Database

For "Functions", select:

• TypeScript

For "Emulators", select:

• Authentication Emulator
• Functions Emulator
• Firestore Emulator
• Database Emulator
• Pub/Sub Emulator
• Storage Emulator

Running

Watch and compile Cloud Functions code (from the functions directory):

$ npm run build:watch

Start Emulators Suite, and take a note of the URL for the HTTP request:

$ firebase emulators:start

Trigger the scheduler once with an HTTP request, using the URL from the previous step:

$ curl http://local/path/torequestedCleanup

Create predefined topic categories:

$ curl http://local/path/to/setupTribes

Optionally start a device simulator or emulator, for example:

$ flutter emulators --launch apple_ios_simulator

Optionally run the unit and integration tests:

$ flutter test
$ flutter test integration_test

Start the app:

$ flutter run

Deployment

Deploy Security Rules for Realtime Database, Cloud Firestore and Firebase Storage:

$ firebase deploy --only database,firestore,storage

Deploy Cloud Functions (from the functions directory):

$ npm run deploy

Create predefined topic categories:

$ curl https://remote/path/to/setupTribes

Build the web release of the Flutter app:

$ flutter build web

Upload the build/web directory to your hosting service of choice.