This webchat is designed to be a hackable and rewarding example of how to structure and work on Erlang/OTP applications. The end result will be a project that is interesting to explore, demonstrates The Right Way(tm), and has bugs to fix and features to add that help ease beginners into working on complete Erlang systems.

In addition to Erlang 18, building this project requires git to be in your PATH and either GNU make or rebar and relx. By default, the application runs on port 8080. Change src/chat_web_app.erl if a different port is desired.

To build and start with make, run make run. To build and start with rebar, run rebar get-deps; rebar compile; relx -c relx.config; ./_rel/chat_web/bin/chat_web console.

After starting the release, point your favorite browser that supports WebSockets (tested with Firefox and Chrome) at http://localhost:8080/ and choose nickname and password (subsequent connections to use that nickname will require the same password).

The available commands are:

/join <room> Join a room. You can be in multiple rooms at once, but your messages will only be sent to the most recently joined room. You can /join a room more than once to select it as the active room.

/part [<room>] Depart from a room. Defaults to the most recently joined room, in which case the previously active room is moved back into the foreground.

Anything other than these commands will be sent to most recently joined room.

• Add tests with gun or possibly PhantomJS
• Write a guide explaining the structure and rationale behind this application and its dependencies.
• Write an introduction into debugging this application using observer and process tracing.
• Write assignments for extending functionality.