GSOC chat application

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Yogendran Jenananthan

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Apr 18, 2013, 11:44:42 AM4/18/13
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hi, I am a final year student of University of Moratuwa, Srilanka, I went through the project ideas and i am interested in the idea of "Implemnting a chat injectable application".


since idea is not described well in the idea pages, I hope to get some clarification in this mail thread .

first I want to know, is this a client chat application(Locally Served Application) which should directly connect to some existing IRC network(server) or whic is a Remotely Served Application?
As I understood from available injectable applications (zerobin & plainpost) ,in posting they just post a link received from content server to the host page and when reading they get the content form server and display them in a iframe when pages is loaded .So I want to know that  this chat application is a popup kind of application or similar to available injectable application which can be viewed in the content of host page.(if second case, in which place chat application should be displayed in the host page e.g in the Facebook?)


could you invite me to the Alpha server to get a better understanding of the project ?

thank you

Sean McGregor

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Apr 19, 2013, 9:56:04 PM4/19/13
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Yogendran,

Welcome!

I sent the invite so you can play around with the current functionality.

My motivation for including the chat application is that I most
commonly use Privly at the moment in gchat boxes, which currently
requires repeatedly generating Privly links. If instead the
application is "chat aware," we won't have to inject a new iframe for
every single message. The same concerns exist on Facebook, although
when chatting there the chat could be in the message window or the
newsfeed.

-Sean
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--
Sean McGregor

Oregon State University, Department of Computer Science
Twitter: seanmcgregor
irc.freenode.net: smcgregor

robi...@gmail.com

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Apr 23, 2013, 11:52:25 AM4/23/13
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hi i am robin doing my third year in SLIIT srinlanka,
I am also interested in this idea. Idea page says implementing ""IRC or another chat service". so if i want to implement gchat connected with content server . should i develop background running scripts to detect the content whenever we entered to gchat box or should i implement a separate gchat app (which can be a plugin ,which popup when user click) to deal with content server.


Sean McGregor

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Apr 23, 2013, 5:58:14 PM4/23/13
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Hello Robin,

If you want to integrate Privly with gchat, the way to do it is to
implement a web application that is injected into the context of any
other web application. These "injectable applications" can live
anywhere, and should not be tied to the user interface of the gmail
account. So don't capture interactions with the gchat box. We already
have a method that will inject an application inside the gchat box.

-Sean

robi...@gmail.com

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Apr 23, 2013, 11:51:45 PM4/23/13
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so this injectable application is going to slightly differ from available plain text injectable application, where plain text app injects a iframe to user when submit by right click, but new chat app should not show a iframe to user (need to right click and post in chat window of gchat?) whenever post. am i correct ?

or 

need to develop a popup web app e.g IRC client app for privly which communicate with content server and post the link to IRC server. ?

Sean McGregor

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Apr 24, 2013, 12:48:05 AM4/24/13
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I imagine the flow would be something like this:

A user wants to chat with a few people he has an email address for
1. He enters the email address of friends on a gmail email
2. He right-clicks the body of the email and selects "Post with IRC"
3. The extension requests a link from the content server
4. The content server returns a link to a web-based IRC client bound
to a random IRC channel
5. The extension places the link into the body of the email and the
user sends the email

Now the user can share this IRC link on other web services. For users
with the extension installed, the IRC session will inject into their
email/newsfeed/messages/etc. Users without the extension will be able
to use the hosted client on the content server.

If the content server wants to, it can obscure the IRC channel by
hiding its identifier on the content server.

This is not the only way to design this application, but it is
certainly an option.

-Sean

Yogendran Jenananthan

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Apr 24, 2013, 1:15:52 PM4/24/13
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Hi , thanks for invited to the server :)
I played around with the chrome extension and the code , information about injectable application on GitHub.
 As I read and understood , now the available injectable applications are hosted remotely . so should chat apps also host in remotely or it can be packed with extension ?

Also could you let me know ,in which repository the source code of the plain text and zero bin available ? (i searched but could not found)

when I post using 'plain text' application by right clicking , a new page/window popups and i have to press the button "create plain text post" to post the content.
so in chat app when anyone right click and post via the chat app it should not open a new popup window and disturb the user , rather it should deal with the content server in the background to get the link and post into chat window. is this what you expect? clarify me if i am wrong.

Sean McGregor

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Apr 24, 2013, 1:56:18 PM4/24/13
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On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 10:15 AM, Yogendran Jenananthan
<y.j...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi , thanks for invited to the server :)
> I played around with the chrome extension and the code , information about
> injectable application on GitHub.
> As I read and understood , now the available injectable applications are
> hosted remotely . so should chat apps also host in remotely or it can be
> packed with extension ?

Injectable apps are locally hosted in the Chrome extension, but this
functionality is not yet built into the other extensions. You should
target the Chrome extension and work to make it locally injected.

>
> Also could you let me know ,in which repository the source code of the plain
> text and zero bin available ? (i searched but could not found)
>

The injectable apps for the Chrome extension are currently in the
Chrome extension's repository. The hosted version of the ZeroBin app
is in its own repo [1], and the hosted version of the PlainPost app is
in the privly-web repo [2]. I am working to unify these into a single
repository [3], but I have been a bit bogged down with organizational
work.

[1] https://github.com/privly/ZeroBin
[2] https://github.com/privly/privly-web
[3] https://github.com/privly/privly-applications

> when I post using 'plain text' application by right clicking , a new
> page/window popups and i have to press the button "create plain text post"
> to post the content.
> so in chat app when anyone right click and post via the chat app it should
> not open a new popup window and disturb the user , rather it should deal
> with the content server in the background to get the link and post into chat
> window. is this what you expect? clarify me if i am wrong.

You are correct from the user's perspective, however the reality of
what the system will do is slightly different. It will launch a new
window, but the new window should immediately return the link without
the need of user interaction.

Yogendran Jenananthan

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Apr 25, 2013, 12:17:36 PM4/25/13
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Hi 

I have create a draft flow for the chat app , so could you please comment on that to understand whether I am in the correct track or not 

posting a chat content in a chat application of a host page
1.user want to chat (from fb/gmail/irc etc)
2.he opens the chat window enters the content , 
3.select the content and right click and choose the option (let say) 'chat post'
4.new window will immediately return the link without the need of user interaction
5.The chat application passes the content URL onto the extension.
6.The extension places the content URL into the chat window 

reading(if extension is installed in reader's browser)
1.The extension injects a content script into the host page.
2.The content script finds a Privly-type link(chat app will have it own link format) and injects it into the host page.
3.The chat application requests the content from the content server.
4.The content server returns the content to the chat application.
5.The chat application tells the host page the height of the application's content

Sean McGregor

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Apr 25, 2013, 9:14:18 PM4/25/13
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I believe you are on the right track. The only question this raises
for me is whether the remote server will return the link's content
history (past messages). I think this question will be answered by
whichever protocol is adopted for messaging.

Interesting Experiment:
If you are running an extension on test.privly.org, change the "src"
attribute of one of the injected iframes to either:
* http://webchat.freenode.net/
* https://kiwiirc.com/client
And see which user interface elements make sense to include, and which do not.

-Sean

Yogendran Jenananthan

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Apr 28, 2013, 1:53:17 PM4/28/13
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I have attached the screen shot after change the "src "attribute to  http://webchat.freenode.net/ and 
 https://kiwiirc.com/client .

I prefer to include elements of  https://kiwiirc.com/client . with captcha for a irc chat application.
 
Hi I went through the code of the chrome extension and under stood the around 60% of the code by debugging in developer mode.reading process of plain text application is ok .In posting process by plain text I understand everything in the extension side.But I don't know what is happening once content is posted to server (https://privlyalpha.org/posts/plain_post) via popup window. how to run the server part and debug ?
 
could you tell me what are the differences between palin post injectable application and chat application which should be implemented? (only new window will immediately return the link without the need of user interaction? )
gsoc privly.PNG

Sean McGregor

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Apr 28, 2013, 5:25:41 PM4/28/13
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On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Yogendran Jenananthan
<y.j...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have attached the screen shot after change the "src "attribute to
> http://webchat.freenode.net/ and
> https://kiwiirc.com/client .
>
> I prefer to include elements of https://kiwiirc.com/client . with captcha
> for a irc chat application.
>
> Hi I went through the code of the chrome extension and under stood the
> around 60% of the code by debugging in developer mode.reading process of
> plain text application is ok .In posting process by plain text I understand
> everything in the extension side.But I don't know what is happening once
> content is posted to server (https://privlyalpha.org/posts/plain_post) via
> popup window. how to run the server part and debug ?

You can setup the content server locally if you like. Checkout the
setup instructions here: https://github.com/privly/privly-web

The installation steps may fail if you have never gotten a rails
project running locally. I think this guide will solve the
prerequisites: http://rubyonrails.org/download

Once you have the server running locally, you can target the extension
at localhost:3000, which is the default address for the content server
running locally.

>
> could you tell me what are the differences between palin post injectable
> application and chat application which should be implemented? (only new
> window will immediately return the link without the need of user
> interaction? )

Plain posts host their content on a content server, whereas the chat
application will hook into a chat standard like IRC. The content
server will not store content for the IRC session, it will just
provide a fallback web-based IRC application for users who don't have
the extension installed.

Yogendran Jenananthan

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Apr 29, 2013, 3:11:08 AM4/29/13
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if content server dont store the content of chat messages, where to store the messages to use in read process?. which component will create the privly link for that chat messages ?
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