TRAVEL CHAT

Travel Chat is a chat application designed for travellers to connect and explore the cities they are visiting. This could include communicating with locals and sharing tips, and meeting up with other tourists at their favorite locations. Users can join cities and topics of conversation within them to chat other users. Travel Chat is built using Java 7, JavaFX 7 and it implements Google's Material UI design. It uses Google Cloud Bigtable to achieve data persistence. Please see our Design Doc for more information.

Please note that the latest version is on the master branch.

DISCLAIMER

CODEU is a program created by Google to develop the skills of future software engineers. This project is not an offical Google Product. This project is a playground for those looking to develop their coding and software engineering skills.

ENVIRONMENT

All instructions here are relative to a LINUX environment. There will be some differences if you are working on a non-LINUX system. We will not support any other development environment.

This project was built using JAVA 7. It is recommended that you install JAVA 7 when working with this project.

This project uses the native HBase API to connect to and interact with Cloud Bigtable. Visit https://cloud.google.com/bigtable for more information.

Table of Contents

• Downloading the code
• Finding your way around the project
• Source Directories
• Costs
• Before you begin
  • Installing Maven
  • Creating a Project in the Google Cloud Platform Console
  • Enabling billing for your project.
  • Install the Google Cloud SDK.
  • Setting Google Application Default Credentials
• Provisioning an instance
• Running the application
• Cleaning up

Downloading the code

1. Clone the https://github.com/neilbarooah/codeu_project_2017, to your local machine:

   https://github.com/neilbarooah/codeu_project_2017
   

2. Navigate to the Travel-Chat directory.

   cd codeu_project_2017/Travel-Chat
   

Google Cloud Bigtable

Costs

This sample uses billable components of Cloud Platform, including:

• Google Cloud Bigtable

Use the Pricing Calculator to generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage. New Cloud Platform users might be eligible for a free trial.

Before you begin

This sample assumes you have Java 8 installed.

Installing Maven

These samples use the Apache Maven build system. Before getting started, be sure to download and install it. When you use Maven as described here, it will automatically download the needed client libraries.

Creating a Project in the Google Cloud Platform Console

If you haven't already created a project, create one now. Projects enable you to manage all Google Cloud Platform resources for your app, including deployment, access control, billing, and services.

1. Open the Cloud Platform Console.
2. In the drop-down menu at the top, select Create a project.
3. Give your project a name.
4. Make a note of the project ID, which might be different from the project name. The project ID is used in commands and in configurations.

Enabling billing for your project.

If you haven't already enabled billing for your project, enable billing now. Enabling billing allows is required to use Cloud Bigtable and to create VM instances.

Install the Google Cloud SDK.

If you haven't already installed the Google Cloud SDK, install the Google Cloud SDK now. The SDK contains tools and libraries that enable you to create and manage resources on Google Cloud Platform.

Setting Google Application Default Credentials

Set your Google Application Default Credentials by initializing the Google Cloud SDK with the command:

gcloud init

Or with the application-default login command:

gcloud auth application-default login

If you get Application Default Credentials are not available, include the following in the ~/.bash_profile:

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/Users/YOUR-LAPTOP/.config/gcloud/application_default_credentials.json

Provisioning an instance

Follow the instructions in the user documentation to create a Google Cloud Platform project and Cloud Bigtable instance if necessary. You'll need to reference your project id and instance id to run the application.

Running the application

Place your projectId and instanceId in the following files:

codeu_project_2017/Travel-Chat/IDs
codeu_project_2017/Travel-Chat/src/main/java/codeu/chat/common/IDs.java

Build and run the sample using Maven.

1. To build and test the project:

   $ sh build.sh
   

   Although there is a script to clean (clean.sh), please don't use it for testing purposes as it gets rid of all the media files being used for the project.

2. If the tables are not yet created, creat tables. This is done once.

   $ sh run_createTable.sh
   $ sh run_createTableForMainUI.sh
   

   To delete the created tables:

   $ sh run_deleteTable.sh
   

3. To run the project you will need to run both the client and the server. Run the following two commands in separate shells:

   $ sh run_server.sh <team_id> <team_secret> <port> <persistent-dir>
   $ sh run_better_gui_client.sh <host> <port>
   

   For testing purposes, use these:

   $ sh run_server.sh 0 0 2000 bin
   $ sh run_client.sh 0 2000
   

   Although it is recommended that you use our GUI as posted above, you can also access the simple GUI provided by CodeU:

   $ sh run_server.sh <team_id> <team_secret> <port> <persistent-dir>
   $ sh run_simple_gui_client.sh <host> <port>
   

   You must specify the following startup arguments for `run_server.sh:

   • <team_id> and <team_secret>: a numeric id for your team, and a secret code, which are used to authenticate your server with the Relay server. You can specify any integer value for <team_id>, and a value expressed in hexadecimal format (using numbers 0-9 and letters in the range A-F) for <team_secret> when you launch the server in your local setup since it will not connect to the Relay server.

   • <port>: the TCP port that your Server will listen on for connections from the Client. You can use any value between 1024 and 65535, as long as there is no other service currently listening on that port in your system. The server will return an error:

     java.net.BindException: Address already in use (Bind failed)
     

     if the port is already in use.

   • <persistent-dir>: the path where you want the server to save data between runs.

   The startup arguments for run_client.sh are the following:

   • <host>: the hostname or IP address of the computer on which the server is listening. If you are running server and client on the same computer, you can use localhost here.
   • <port>: the port on which your server is listening. Must be the same port number you have specified when you launched run_server.sh.

All running images write informational and exceptional events to log files. The default setting for log messages is "INFO". You may change this to get more or fewer messages, and you are encouraged to add more LOG statements to the code. The logging is implemented in codeu.chat.util.Logger.java, which is built on top of java.util.logging.Logger, which you can refer to for more information.

In addition to your team's client and server, the project also includes a Relay Server and a script that runs it (run_relay.sh). This is not needed to get started with the project.

Cleaning up

To avoid incurring extra charges to your Google Cloud Platform account, remove the resources created for this sample.

1. Go to the Clusters page in the Cloud Console.

   Go to the Clusters page

2. Click the cluster name.

3. Click Delete.

   

4. Type the cluster ID, then click Delete to delete the cluster.

Acknowledgments

• CodeU team at Google for giving us the opportunity to participate in the program. Special thanks to Andrew Smith from Google for his ideas and continued guidance.

Release Notes

Version 1.0.0

New Features:
* Data Persistence and Google Cloud Bigtable integration
* Add groups/cities.
* Material UI implemented for GUI
* Delete user
* Delete conversation/topic
* Users have nicknames
* Handles duplicate usernames/topics
* Password-based sign-in

Known Bugs and Defects:
* Pressing the <enter> button on the message panel, login and registration forms crashes the app. It is
* recommended that you click on the "Send", "Register", and "Login" buttons provided in the UI.
* Certain features such as deleting users/conversations, manually adding conversations/groups is
* implemented for the command line only.