A WebSocket-based chat for Wisdom of Crowds experiments, which are usually deployed in LANs. The server-side has been developed in Java using Netty, while the client-side has been written in Javascript using JQuery.

Users are not required to register to log into WoChat; indeed, the WoChat software is designed to be totally anonymous and its users management system is based on IP addressing. Each user has to have a distinct IP and their sessions remain active until: a) they force disconnection, or b) admin disconnect them, or c) their connection go down. Therefore, if a user closes the WoChat tab or the browser, his session remains operating and resumes as soon as he comes back.

You can easily clone the full project by executing:

$ git clone https://github.com/francesco-ficarola/wochat.git

After cloning the git repository you can build and run the software by executing:

$ cd wochat/
$ ./build.sh
$ ./run.sh

or, if you prefer all at once, just call the following script:

$ ./build-and-run.sh

The run.sh script is there for your convenience. Otherwise, after building, you can find the distribution package (i.e., WoChat.tar.gz) inside the target folder. You can extract it wherever you like, then run the software by executing:

$ cd WoChat/
$ ./startup.sh

If the server properly starts, then open your browser (Chrome or Firefox are recommended) and go to:

http://127.0.0.1:8080/

You can find all parameters that can be changed in conf/wochat.properties:

• server.port : the WoChat's service port
• admin.username : admin's username (admin by default)
• checkingtimes.pendingmessages : number of times of checking pending messages before disconnecting a user (set to 0 if you want to disable the acknowledgment mechanism)
• communication.timeout : time interval of checking pending messages (it works if checkingtimes.pendingmessages is greater than 0)
• killme.now : allows users to kill and disconnect themselves.

If you log into WoChat as Administrator, you can execute the following commands:

• /users count : asks for the total number of users (active and inactive)
• /users ping : sends pinglike messages
• /users active : sends the number of active users (a /users ping request must be performed before)
• /users surveying : sends a list of users still surveying (a /users ping request must be performed before)
• /msg <your_message> : sends everyone admin's message
• /disconnect <id_user> : forces user's disconnection
• /start survey s<number> r<number> : starts the survey mode (number of survey and round)
• /start chat : starts the chat mode
• /kill wochat : kills WoChat

Below all commands available for users:

/killme now : auto-kill and disconnection (iff killme.now=true in wochat.properties)

All questions must be written in conf/woc.survey.* files, one for each line. Images in surveys are supported by the following syntax: [img]url_img[/img] (required a dedicated line).

All log-files are saved in the "logs" folder (from the repository root: target/WoChat/logs).

• wochat.log : system log
• connections.log : information about users' connections
• interactions.log : users' interactions
• messages.csv : users' messages in CSV format
• userslist.csv : list of all participants in CSV format
• survey.csv : answers from all surveys in CSV format

Click to enlarge.