friman / skychat

Future-proof virtual cinema platform

Future-proof virtual cinema platform

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Overview → Install → Customize → Contribute

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Overview

The SkyChat lets you:

• 📺 Play medias in a shared synchronized player (Youtube, Twitch, self-hosted)
• 📁 Organize self-hosted medias in folders to easily search & play them.
• ⚽ Have fun with live cursor visualization, casino roulette, cursor-based football, etc..
• 🔒 Feel safe. OP double auth, log fuzzing, shadow ban, TOR network detection/ban, etc..
• 💻 Install and set it up in 2 minutes.

How to install

Install in 30 seconds

If using docker you need only docker. Otherwise, ensure you have the following installed on your system:

• nodejs >= 14
• sqlite3, zip, ffmpeg (e.g. apt install -y sqlite3 zip ffmpeg)

Then, follow these 2 steps:

# 1. Use the autoinstall script (Clones the repository then executes app/script/setup.sh)
bash <(wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/skychatorg/skychat/master/app/script/autoinstall.sh -O -) && cd skychat

# 2.A. Run the app in docker
docker compose up
# 2.B. Run the app on your local host
npm i && npm start

Application setup

By default, the application will be listening to localhost:8080 and assume it is accessed from http://localhost:8080. In order to customize the domain name of your SkyChat application, edit the .env.json file. The fields in the .env.json contain the private variables of the application, listed below:

field	type	default	semantic
location	string	"http://localhost:8080"	Server location, i.e. what user need to put in their browser to access your app
hostname	string	"localhost"	Hostname the server will listen to
port	number	8080	Server port. If you are using docker only, modify DOCKER_PORT to match this value.
ssl	false or {certificate:string,key:string}	false	SSL configuration (paths to certificate and key files). Use false if SSL is disabled.
plugins	string[]	[]	List of enabled plugin groups. It is possible to disable the player, games, the gallery or other features by removing a plugin group from this list
users_passwords_salt	string	"$RANDOM_SALT"	Password salt.
users_token_salt	string	"$RANDOM_SALT"	Token salt.
youtube_api_key	string	""	Youtube api key
google_analytics_id	string	""	Optional google analytics ID
op	string[]	[]	OP usernames. OP usernames can use the /setright command.
op_passcode	string?	"$RANDOM_PASSCODE"	OP passcode. Activate your OP session with /op $op_passcode
email_transport	nodemailer.JSONTransport	{"sendmail": true,"newline": "unix","path": "/usr/sbin/sendmail"}	Value given to nodemailer.createTransport to initialize the mailer

Setup Youtube

The SkyChat requires a key for the Youtube plugin to work. This key needs to be put in your .env.json file.

Using the Youtube API is free but there is a daily quota, which when exceeded blocks the requests until the next day. If it happens, the Youtube plugin will be disabled until the next day.

1. Go to the Google Cloud Platform. If you never activated the account, you will have to activate it.
2. Click Create credentials > API key
3. Copy the generated API key, and paste it in your .env.json file (the variable name is youtube_api_key)
4. Restart the server

Customize

Disabling features

Plugins are grouped in so-called PluginGroup instances. It is possible to disable specific features of the application by removing the plugin group name from the env.json file. By default, these plugin groups are included:

name	removable	description
CorePluginGroup	❌	Basic features for the SkyChat to run properly
PlayerPluginGroup	✅	Shared player functionnality
GamesPluginGroup	✅	All the fun features, live cursor visualization and mini games
ExtraSecurityPluginGroup	✅	Log fuzzer, TOR auto-ban, IP history tracker, user usurp command
GalleryPluginGroup	✅	Gallery for self-hosted medias
UserDefinedPluginGroup	✅	Custom plugins. By default, this plugin group contains no plugin, but any user-created plugin will be held by this instance

In private rooms, only core plugins are loaded.

Customize preferences

The config/preferences.json file specifies application preferences. The available fields are detailed below.

field	type	default	description
minRightForPrivateMessages	number	-1	Min. right to send private messages
minRightForMessageHistory	number	-1	Min. right to access room message history
minRightForUserModeration	number	'op'	Min. right to ban, kick and access user ips
minRightForAudioRecording	number	-1	Min. right to share and play audio recordings
minRightForConnectedList	number	-1	Min. right to access the list of currently active users
minRightForPolls	number	-1	Min. right to create polls
minRightForGalleryRead	number | 'op'	0	Min. right to access the gallery
minRightForGalleryWrite	number | 'op'	'op'	Min. right to add and remove gallery documents
minRightForPlayerAddMedia	number | 'op'	0	Min. right to add medias to the player
minRightForPlayerManageSchedule	number | 'op'	'op'	Min. right to manage the player schedules
maxReplacedImagesPerMessage	number	50	Max. number of replaced images per message
maxReplacedStickersPerMessage	number	50	Max. number of replaced stickers per message
maxNewlinesPerMessage	number	20	Max. number of newlines per message

Customize the fake message history

config/fakemessages.txt contains the fake messages shown to users whose right level is less than minRightForMessageHistory defined in preferences.json. If minRightForMessageHistory is set to -1, you do not need to modify the fake messages since not one will see them.

Customize guest names

config/guestnames.txt is the pool of non-logged usernames. When a guest logs in, a random name is associated to its session. These names are randomly used from this file. If you want to change these names, keep in mind that they should not contain whitespace characters (anything matched by \s so newline, tab, space, ..). Default random names are animal names.

Adding features

The SkyChat is easily extensible through plugins. You can define custom plugins in app/server/skychat/plugins/user_defined/. It will be automatically loaded during the next application startup.

Contribute

Develop

To watch, build and run a local SkyChat server, use:

npm run dev:server
# If you are also working on the client, type in an another bash:
npm run dev:client

This will start a static file server & websocket server, available under the location specified in the .env.json file. When the source files change, the build processes re-runs automatically.

Add features

Please use only one of the following to suggest new features (or bug fixes):

• Create a pull request
• Open an issue with your proposal