Chatroom Application

This will eventually be a basic chatroom application that takes some inspiration from Discord. It isn't meant to be a discord clone. It's only meant to be a learning experience for backend software, using NoSql(CassandraDB), and PostgreSQL.

Warning

This Readme isn't complete because testing for Cassandra isn't complete or polished. So there will be some issues.

Building

The OS used is ubuntu 18.04.

You will need a golang compiler, at least 1.14.4.

You need to install at least PostgreSQL 10.12. You can install Postgres with

sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib

After installing, psql should be available as a command. You'll need to create a role using psql:

psql -c "CREATE ROLE chat WITH SUPERUSER CREATEDB LOGIN PASSWORD 'postgres';" -U postgres -h localhost

The prompted password is postgres when signing in with postgres user. This first line creates a superuser role with the password postgres with the ability create databases.

Then create a database named chat-app:

psql -c 'CREATE DATABASE "chat-app";' -U postgres -h localhost

Then I change the owner of the database chat-app to be owned by the user chat. To do so execute:

psql -c 'ALTER DATABASE chat-app OWNER TO chat;' -U postgres -h localhost

If you run into any problems you can use this link to familiarize yourself with starting up PostgreSQL. I got all my information from there.

Now you should have the appropriate sql database the application is expecting.

Next you will have to install CassandraDB. Use Cassandra's installation page and follow the installation from debian packages instructions. You need at least version 3.11.x. Make sure nodetool status works before proceeding.

Now that Cassandra is up and running, you will have to create a keyspace in order to add the table to store messages:

cqlsh -e "CREATE KEYSPACE IF NOT EXISTS chatserver WITH replication = {'class': 'SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor': 3};"

Now that PostgreSQL and Cassandra are running, You'll need to create a file named .env in the root of the repository. Add the below text to the file. They will serve as environment variables read in by a dotenv go package.

POSTGRES_PORT=5432
POSTGRES_HOST=localhost
POSTGRES_DB=chat-app
POSTGRES_USER=chat
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres
SESSION_SECRET=sessionsecret
KEYSPACE=chatserver
PGTEST_PORT=5432
PGTEST_HOST=localhost
PGTEST_DB=testdb
PGTEST_USER=testdb
PGTEST_PASSWORD=postgres

With that everything should be ready. Go to the root of the repository and execute go run and the application should be available on your browser at localhost:8000.

Running Tests

You'll need to create a role using psql:

psql -c "CREATE ROLE testdb WITH SUPERUSER CREATEDB LOGIN PASSWORD 'postgres';" -U postgres -h localhost

Then create testdb:

psql -c 'CREATE DATABASE testdb;' -U postgres -h localhost

and then:

psql -c 'ALTER DATABASE testdb OWNER to testdb;' -U postgres -h localhost -p 5432 -w

This database will be used purely for running tests.

Run all tests with go test ./...