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- # Get Started
- In this guide we’ll create a basic chat application. It requires almost no basic prior knowledge of Node.JS or Socket.IO, so it’s ideal for users of all knowledge levels.
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- ## Introduction
- Writing a chat application with popular web applications stacks like LAMP (PHP) has normally been very hard. It involves polling the server for changes, keeping track of timestamps, and it’s a lot slower than it should be.
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- Sockets have traditionally been the solution around which most real-time chat systems are architected, providing a bi-directional communication channel between a client and a server.
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- This means that the server can push messages to clients. Whenever you write a chat message, the idea is that the server will get it and push it to all other connected clients.
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- # The Web Framework
- The first goal is to set up a simple HTML webpage that serves out a form and a list of messages. We’re going to use the Node.JS web framework `express` to this end. Make sure *Node.JS* is installed.
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- First let’s create a `package.json` manifest file that describes our project. I recommend you place it in a dedicated empty directory (I’ll call mine `chat-example`).
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- ```
- {
- "name": "socket-chat-example",
- "version": "0.0.1",
- "description": "my first socket.io app",
- "dependencies": {}
- }
- ```
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