CLI Messenger

A tool that provides an interface for owning your own chats.

Installation

• Run npm i -g cli-messenger or yarn add global cli-messenger

Development

• Clone this repository
• Run npm install in this directory
• Run npm run link

Usage

• To start a chat server on localhost, run cli-messenger
• To start a chat server with port forwarding to ngrok, run NGROK=true cli-messenger. Inspect the terminal for the ngrok address
• To connect with the chat server, run cli-messenger connect in a separate terminal.
• To specify a custom server address such as an ngrok address, run cli-messenger connect <server-address>

Environment Variables

• PORT (server): PORT=4000 cli-messenger will run the chat server on port 4000
• NGROK (server): NGROK=true cli-messenger will port forward the chat server to ngrok.io
• DISPLAY_NAME (client): DISPLAY_NAME=Mykeels cli-messenger connect will set my chat display name to Mykeels
• SILENT (client): SILENT=true cli-messenger connect will prevent playing notification sounds
• MESSAGE_SOUND_FILE (client): MESSAGE_SOUND_FILE=/Users/mykeels/music/my-sound.mp3 cli-messenger connect will play my-sound.mp3 everytime a message is received

For developers, you should copy the .env.example file to a .env file, so you can set the variables within it in bulk

Chat Commands

In the chat client, there are commands to control the user's experience. Every command is prefixed with dot (.), so

• .help will show all available commands and their usage information
• .list will list all users available in the chat
• .name <name> will change your chat display name
• .file will open a file dialog window, so you can select a file to send