Pusher Chat

A chat room example built on Pusher for real-time messaging.

Uses presence channels to allow multiple users to chat at the same time and client events to communicate directly without a middle-man server running (except for auth).

Built on Node.js for the backend and React for the frontend.

Setup

Sign up to Pusher and create a free account.

Enable client events in app settings.

Install

Backend:

cd backend
npm install
cp .env.default .env
nano .env # fill in the Pusher config
npm start

Frontend (run in a seperate tab):

cd frontend
npm install
cp .env .env.local
nano .env.local # fill in the Pusher config
npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:5173/ (open multiple browser tabs to simulate multiple users).

Persistence

If you need to persist messages, add a webhook in Pusher (triggered by client events) and point to the backend server /pusher/webhook endpoint.

Check the lambda folder for an example of an AWS Lambda function that receives messages from a Pusher webhook and stores them in DynamoDB.