Implementation of Vue-based chat

basic-vue-chat

Easy to use VueJS chat.

Installation

You can install the component using package managers, such as npm or yarn or install component from the repository.

npm

npm i basic-vue-chat

yarn

yarn add basic-vue-chat

using repository

git clone https://github.com/jmaczan/basic-vue-chat.git
cd basic-vue-chat
npm i

Usage

Chat is a single Vue component, which you can find in /src/components/basic-vue-chat/. To start, just import BasicVueChat component and put the following line into your html code:

<basic-vue-chat />

Dependencies

Components uses only two dependencies - Vue (vue package)and Moment.js for Vue (vue-moment).

Pushing messages

To push message to chat, just pass newMessage prop to BasicVueChat. Example:

<basic-vue-chat :new-message="message" />

The message object above may be part of data in your Vue component in which you will use BasicVueChat.

Example of correct message structure:

{
  id: 0,
  author: 'Person',
  contents: 'hi there',
  date: '16:30'
}

You can find example of message pushing in App.vue file.

Handling messages from user

When user sends message, the message is propagated to BasicVueChat component and event newOwnMessage is emitted. To handle this event, you can for example do this:

<basic-vue-chat @newOwnMessage="onNewOwnMessage" />

where onNewOwnMessage(message) is a method in your Vue component in which you will use BasicVueChat.

Example of correct event payload structure:

{
  id: 1,
  contents: 'hello',
  date: '16:31'
}

To start development, you can use hot reload mode:

npm run serve

To build production version:

npm run build

To run tests:

npm test

For demo purposes, there's a Push message button, which pushes another person's mock message to chat.

Mock data

To attach mock data, just pass logic prop attachMock to BasicVueChat.

Customization

Title

Pass prop title to BasicVueChat component.

<basic-vue-chat :title="'My Best Team'" />

Initial data

Pass prop initialFeed to BasicVueChat component.

<basic-vue-chat :initial-feed="feed" />

Example of correct data structure:

const feed = [
  {
    id: 0,
    author: 'Person',
    contents: 'hi there',
    date: '16:30'
  },
  {
    id: 1,
    author: 'Me',
    contents: 'hello',
    date: '16:30'
  }
]

Styling

Chat uses SCSS, so you can easily override variables used in project. You can find them in /src/assets/scss/modules/_variables.scss. All variables have default values.

Description	Variable	Default value
Primary color	$primary	$slate-blue (#6B63D8)
Secondary color	$secondary	$lavender (#B284ED)
Header color	$header-color	$ghost-white (#FAF9FF)
Input background color	$input-background-color	$alice-blue (#F2EFFF)
Font family	$font-family	'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif
Font weight	$font-weight	400
Font size	$font-size	14px
Dark text color	$dark-text-color	$madison (#2C3E50)
Light text color	$light-text-color	$ghost-white (#FAF9FF)
Dark background color	$dark-bg	$madison (#2C3E50)
Light background color	$light-bg	$white (#FFFFFF)
Chat window width	$window-width	500px
Chat window height	$window-height	400px
Message max width	$message-max-width	200px

Code structure

1. assets
   • Sass standard CSS code structure
   • Components styles in partials directory
   • Variables and settings in modules directory
2. components
   • chat's components are in subdirectories of basic-vue-chat directory
3. helpers
   • reusable helpers for scrolling functionalities
4. App.vue - runner file
5. main.js - project config

Technologies used

1. JavaScript
   • Vue
   • Moment.js
2. HTML5
3. CSS
   • SCSS
   • BEM
4. Tests
   • Jest
   • Vue test utils
5. Tooling
   • npm
6. Continuous Integration
   • Travis CI
7. Linting
   • ESLint standard config

Developed and tested under macOS High Sierra 10.13 and Google Chrome 69.

GitHub