I'm working on a private chat messenger application using react-native node and socket.io and need to set up the structure of the project and the data. the internet seems to be overloaded with ton of different answers and I was hoping to get some answers about the problems I have with these solutions
So as far as I understand from the official socket.io documentation https://socket.io/docs/rooms-and-namespaces/#Namespaces namespaces were meant to "separate concerns within your application by introducing separation between communication channels" which sounds exactly like what I need for creating a separation between different conversation.
and rooms "Within each namespace, you can also define arbitrary channels that sockets can join and leave."
Here is the data structure I had in mind:
Conversations (namespaces) table -
id, namespace, user1, user2
Messages table-
conversationId, content, from(user1/2)
Here is the general flow I had in mind :
Step 1 -
User connect the main namespace ('/')
Step 2 -
The server returns a list of all user's conversations (namespaces) from the conversation table in the database
Step 3 -
Connect the user to (all?) his namespaces (or should I only connect him to the conversation he enters?)
Step 4 -
Join to default 'chat' room under each namespace (is this really necessary in a private chat application ? I know on slack for example it make sense because we speak to the same group of people under different channels, but is there any other advantage for room that I'm missing? and if it does necessary should the user join all the rooms belongs to him when the applications first fire or should I only join him into the room he enters?)
Step 5 -
When a user enters specific conversations he get all the chat history under this conversation (from Messages table in the database)
Step 6 -
When a new conversation is added we add a record to the conversation table (and we emit 'newConversation' event to the entire namespace/room that include just the sender for now (how do I make sure to notify the receiver about the new namespace related to him should I emit the event to the main name space and validate the access right on connection to namespace attempt or should I use a solution like @)) perhaps this is out of the socket.io scope and should be left to the server to deal with ?
Step 7 -
When a new message is sent we add it to the messages table and emit 'newMessage' event to the entire namespace/room
@ on many places I saw some versions of the following solution: How to send a message to a particular client with socket.io which basically suggest storing a dictionary relating between each user and his socket id, what I don't understand is, every time a user refresh/login/logout he receive a new socket id and all the events we emitted to his previous socket id will now be lost
My expected result is a chat like whatsapp or facebook messenger (but with private conversations only) where you get notified in messages in other conversation even when you are on the home page and not inside a specific conversation
