Show HN: Drop-In Chat – Chatify your app

https://dropinchat.com/

by ahochhaus • 12 years ago

49 44 12 years ago

dropinchat.com

lostsock2• 12 years ago

I don't have a use for this right now but it looks like a nice and simple solution.

Not that I necessarily think I would need to but is it possible for the webmaster to get logs of the chats?

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

One of the app authors here. We did this for YC hacks and ran out of time (30 hours). At this point we don't store the chats for anything but we plan on adding that soon. At that point, the admin should be able to search.

Please let us know if we can do anything to improve the app for a possible use case for you.

lostsock2• 12 years ago

The only thing I can think of right now would be a way to theme it. Just being able to change the colour of the solid bar would be nice.

Walkman2• 12 years ago

A public chat channel where everybody can write and read would be nice!

scrollaway3• 12 years ago

What does this use in the backend? Is this xmpp-based? Is it open source?

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

The back end is golang. The client server messaging protocol is BrowserChannel/WebChannel.

https://code.google.com/p/libevent-browserchannel-server/wik...

We open sourced the BrowserChannel library here:

https://github.com/samegoal/wc

And have a chat room demo app here:

https://github.com/samegoal/wcchat

The code we used for this particular site isn't Open Source yet. We are still trying to figure out what we want to do with it before we make that decision.

scrollaway3• 12 years ago

Good luck with it. I hope you open source it.

Would you be able to give a rationale on why you chose against xmpp?

slig• 12 years ago

This is awesome. I've been searching for a SaaS chat widget like this for years.

Any ideas on pricing?

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

For the time being we are going to keep this completely free to gauge interest. At some point we would likely charge, but at this point don't have solid plans about what the pricing would look like. Sorry I can't be more precise.

chatango2• 12 years ago

Do you guys know about https://chatango.com ? It's a more mature product, also based on Go backend. Founder here, so please ask any questions.

parad0x1• 12 years ago

Shameless advertising much?

Also joined 2 mins ago.

dustintran• 12 years ago

Shameless hijacking and also just not as good..

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

I looked at chatango and I think the intended use case is a bit different than dropinchat. Drop-in chat provides user-to-user instant messaging. As best I can tell, chatango (primarily?) provides broadcast style communication. Is this correct?

chatango2• 12 years ago

Chatango is primarily focused on group chats, but you can send private messages as well. Dropinchat.com mentions "chat groups". Are they only for user-to-user messages?

rubiquity• 12 years ago

Oh it's written in Go? That's so cool! Can you tell us more? Maybe do a Show HN some time.

jpkeisala• 12 years ago

Frontpage talks about chat and opportunity to get wife from Asia. Maybe you should consider go down a bit with ads?

misrab2• 12 years ago

Hehe built something like this as a small project a while ago for fun...interlude.im

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

Hi, I just checked out interlude. Cool project.

I think the intent of our app is slightly different than yours. Our hope was to allow users of authenticated web applications to chat with one another. Our demo is misleading in this regard as all visitors to dropinchat.com get dropped into a single "chat group" (we din't want users to need to register in order to try it out). We think that apps this product might work well with are enterprise style collaborative applications (where users are already authenticated).

misrab2• 12 years ago

Fair enough :) Good luck!

misiti3780• 12 years ago

Does anyone know a good open-source version of this type of functionality. I have a client now that wants me to add this to their site but the data cannot go through a third-party company.

My stack is django-based but I am open to any solution that works well.

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

If you are willing to build on go, we open sourced the "wc" (WebChannel) library which handles all of the messages for dropinchat.

http://gopkg.in/samegoal/wc.v0

Also, out of curiosity, if dropinchat provided a virtual appliance so that you didn't need to send the messages off network would that address your security concerns?

blindwaves• 12 years ago

You can take a look at Mozilla's TogetherJS (https://togetherjs.com/). It has a chat functionality and you can host it on your own.

jcbrand• 12 years ago

I wrote an open source XMPP-based chat client: https://conversejs.org

There is a Django add-on for it as well: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-conversejs

In the latest unreleased version (0.8), you only have to load converse.min.js and converse.min.css in your HTML.

The 0.8 release should go out within the next few weeks.

rakoo• 12 years ago

Try Jappix mini (https://mini.jappix.com/). Uses XMPP instead of reinventing the wheel once again.

Also, if you need a generic chat, try Candy (https://candy-chat.github.io/candy/). Again, XMPP-based.

ioddly• 12 years ago

Very nice, I'll be keeping an eye on this. I'm sure you guys have a million other things to do, but don't forget handling multiple tabs by the same user.

e: Ah, and somebody's already trying to inject javascript. You rascals ;)

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. Please keep it coming if you think of anything else. We will be prioritizing what to work on.

svaldez• 12 years ago

Is this similar to http://gochat.us/ ?

waitingkuo• 12 years ago

I do need a messaging service for my product! Can it be used in production currently? I'm also curious about whether you provide the video conference api in the future or not? That would be useful!

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

Hi waitingkuo. Thanks for the encouragement. Currently I wouldn't recommend using Drop-In Chat in a production context as the code is too new and not really stable. When we get to the point we think the product is ready for production use we'll make an announcement.

At this point we do not have plans to add video conferencing support.

owenversteeg• 12 years ago

WARNING: DO NOT TRY TO CHAT WITH PEOPLE - BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN - READ BELOW

Uhh, it's possible to inject Javascript into this. There are two people that already did this. One is harmless and alerts "Wufff!" and the other redirects you to pornhub.

[edit] Now there's another that redirects you to lemonparty.

[edit 2] Now there's another that redirects you here. It's fun watching this play out live, with the nice vs. the mean HNers.

Flam• 12 years ago

This is a common mistake tons of developers do.

Pro-tip: Escape all user input either when it's going into the system or when it's going back out to be displayed!

fmavituna• 12 years ago

Maybe not everyone knows this, it's called XSS. There is a good cheat sheet to protect against issues like this from OWASP : https://www.owasp.org/index.php/XSS_(Cross_Site_Scripting)_P...

Shameless plug: We develop a tool that detects vulnerabilities such as this automatically (even in JavaScript based web apps) - https://www.netsparker.com/netsparker/

There is also a free community edition which would possibly detect this vulnerability : https://www.netsparker.com/communityedition/

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

Drop-In Chat had a few different XSS flaws. They should all be fixed now. Thanks for finding them and pointing them out!

Sorry for the slow security fix, I was traveling after leaving YC Hacks. Please do let me know if you find anything else wrong.

danbucholtz• 12 years ago

Very cool app. Needs a little bit of maturing but a really good first step!

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

Thanks for the encouragement. What we have is certainly just a first step. We will continue to keep making incremental improvements now that YC Hacks is over.

ahochhaus17• 12 years ago

Sorry for the XSS problems. They are fixed now so it is safe to visit and test again if you like. Thanks owenversteeg for warning everyone.

Show HN: Drop-In Chat – Chatify your app

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