pohny-ver

I'm traveling and I wanted cheap phone solution that could adapt internationally. I spent a week to look for decent web phone that would fit those criteria ... I try a few which ended up as a huge waste of time. Best I found was skype which is buggy, expensive and is owned by microsoft. Googling around, I found twilio, and spent 3 week-ends (and some evenings) producing pohny-ver and pohny-web. It's pretty funny when you realise that looking for a decent webphone that manage texting and calling is as long a coding it yourself.

Description

Two servers:

twilio-server :: on to handle incoming connection from twilio service, receive /message, /call and get /called. http only. It's possible and recommanded to use https with a signed certificate. (Self signed certicate don't work with twilio :( )

pohny-server :: handle pohny clients like pohny-web and pohny-cli, mostly uses websocket, but also use a bit of http for authentication and to communicate with twilio-server.

Requirements

• nodejs
• coffeescript npm install -g coffee-script
• mocha npm install -g mocha

Installation

I. Setup a twilio account

1. Subscribe to a twilio account, get a phone number and configure it
2. Setup your twilio number (receive messages and calls):

Voice: POST http://yourdomain.com:3001/called

Message: POST http://yourdomain.com:3001/message

Screenshot: http://puu.sh/pg0t5/e12fcfdfe2.png

3. Setup a twilio app (emit calls):

Voice: POST http://yourdomain.com:3001/call

Screenshot: http://puu.sh/pg0FM/d52b1ab64a.png

II. Setup pohny-ver

• clone repository on your server, and open folder

• Install project dependancies (server-side)

  npm install

• Compile coffee sources

  npm run build

• Copy env template to desired environment and fill up variables with your credentials

  cp etc/env.sh.dist etc/dev.sh

• Source your env (will be used by your server AND your tests)

  source ./etc/dev.sh

• start your project

  npm start

• run tests

  npm test

II. Setup your client

Right now only pony-web is availble, check instructions there to install it: https://github.com/pohny/pohny-web

Folder architecture

public = public ressources, static content accessible from outside (/path/to/project/public/path/to/something is my.website.com/path/to/something) and contains public resources like the index.php but also the css, js and the images.

src = coffeescript sources

build = compiled js sources

bin = executable scripts

etc = configurations

test = Unit tests, api tests, ...

Current features:

• Contacts: CRUD, list, search, call, and start a sms chat

• Conversations: list sorted by date, delete

• Chat:

  > send and receive sms with a single contact,

  > sms history displayed in a ichat style UI,

  > shortcut to call contact you're chatting with

• Voice:

  > From anywhere in the app receive a call, then via a popup accept or reject it

  > active call are displayed in a stick bar

  > dial a number from keyboard (E.164 Number), when line is on pressing [0-9#*] will send the key

Possible improvements, TODO List:

Critical

• Rewew voice token somehow and check websocket timeout for idle connections

Twilio token for voice features are valid 1 hour only. (Although it's a lot less critical if you use twilio failover to redirect call to voicemail)

Medium

• Voice: add history of call(received, sent and missed)
• Voice: add mute
• Voice: add a timer to see how long the chat is.
• improve design for buttons

Minor

• Chat: mark message as unsent or sent. This is mostly in rare case where internet would be not stable, or in a case where pohny server or twilio servers will face technical issue.
• Conversation list: add message when no conversation (no data available or something)
• persist database somehow if you're using LocalMapper

(Switching to redis is an easy option, but for that repo I want to keep as few depandancy as possible)

• Cleanup few remaining style attribute in index.html; optimize nyfault.css