How To Make A Chat System In 5 Mins

A step-by-step guide to building a chat system in 5 minutes

More than 3 Billion people around the world are using messaging apps in their day-to-day lives. Most of the time they use WhatsApp and Facebook for their personal communication. But the question here is, 

Is WhatsApp and Facebook reliable for business communication?

While the parent company of these two messaging giants is facing allegations of data breaches, most experts advise businesses to build their own chat apps with custom security. 

But, how to build your own chat system? Is it easy?

Keep your worries away! This article will cover everything about building your own chat system, its prerequisites and the complete development process before you get started with your project.  

What Is A Chat System?

The chat system is a chat app that uses the TCP/ IP ( Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol) and follows the client-server model to deliver the messages smoothly between clients. Some popular examples of a chat system are Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Discord, Google Chat, and Line. 

How Does A Chat System Work?

When you launch your chat app, the following processes will take place for each user action. Let me break them down:

Step 1: User Registration and Authentication

• First, a user registers into your messaging app by filling in details like username, email and password.  
• This is where you need to implement secure authentication systems to verify user identity.  You can use technologies like OAuth, JWT (JSON Web Tokens), or traditional username/password validation.

Step 2: Establishing a Connection

• Once users start using your chat app, it starts connecting to the chat server.
• During this stage, the chat meta data may be exposed to risks like data theft and malware attacks. To ensure that the conversations are safe, you need to use secure communication protocols like AES-128 and SSL.

Step 3: User Presence and Status

• Right when the user enters your app, the server starts maintaining a record of users’ online/offline status and availability.
• This is where an online presence indicator feature will help your app update and broadcast user presence status to their contacts.

Step 5. Message Routing

• Now, you may send 1:1 messages or chat with multiple users. This is where the server receives messages and identifies the recipient based on their unique identifier.
• Make sure you implement a logic to send and receive one-on-one messaging and group chat routing.

Step 6. Real-Time Communication

• You can use WebSocket or a similar technology to establish a persistent, bidirectional connection between the client and server.
• This enables real-time communication within your app at the lowest possible latency.

Step 7. Message Delivery and Receipt

• Next you need to implement message delivery and receipt confirmation in your chat system.
• Optionally, you can include read receipts to inform the sender when the recipient has read the message.

Step 8. Message Storage

• When it comes to accessing the messages, decide whether messages will be stored temporarily for real-time delivery or persistently for future retrieval.
• Implement a database system to store messages securely, associating them with the sender, recipient, and timestamp.

Step 9. Notifications

• Develop a notification system to inform users of new messages, friend requests, or other relevant events.
• You can also keep your users informed when they are not active on your app, through notifications on their mobile apps.

Step 10. Logging Out

• When the user logs out from your app, you need to make sure that you implement a secure logout mechanism. So that the client disconnects from the server and updates the user’s presence status.

Step 11. Scaling and Performance

• Keep an eye on the scalability of your chat system. You can maintain load balancing and scalable infrastructure to handle increasing numbers of users and messages, as your app grows.

12. Testing and Quality Assurance

• Conduct thorough testing of the app, including unit testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing.

Pay special attention to security testing to identify and address potential vulnerabilities in advance to avoid threat to your brand integrity and reputation.

Is It Possible To Build A Chat System In 5 Mins?

Yes, it  is possible to develop any instant messaging application in just 5 minutes. You can simply use a pre-built Flutter plugin to build a complete chat app. 

A Flutter chat plugin comes with plug & play messaging components to  add more than 150 chat features along with video and voice calls. 

Here are some of the unique benefits of a Flutter plugin:

• Quick & easy integration
• Unlimited Chats & Calls
• Calendar Synchronization & Scheduling
• Chat Tagging
• Chat History
• Chat Backup
• Multi-Device Login
• Enterprise Scalability & Reliability
• SIP & VoIP Call
• Topics Based Chat
• Custom Security
• Share Large Files

Where can you find the best Flutter chat plugin?

Now, this is a serious question. While you may find 100s of Flutter SDKs on the internet, it is necessary that you tick all the features listed above. This is important because you need to implement all of the features above to give your users a seamless messaging experience. 

Fortunately, MirrorFly comes with the most reliable and secure Flutter chat plugin that you can add to your app in just 5 mins. 

There are 3 ways to get this feature-rich Flutter plugin:

1. You can directly download the plugin by creating a MirrorFly Account
2. Download the sample app from Github
3. Download the plugin from pub.dev

Once you’ve downloaded the plugin, you can follow the steps below to build your own chat system. 

How To Build Your Own Chat System?

As we’ve discussed above, I’ll guide you on your chat system development with MirrorFly’s Flutter chat plugin.

But before we get started, you need to check the prerequisites needed for this project.

Make sure you have the following:

• Android Lollipop 5.0 (API Level 21) or above
• Java 7 or higher
• Gradle 4.1.0 or higher The minimum requirements for Chat SDK for iOS
• iOS 12.1 or later

When your requirements are ready, you can start with the below steps.

Get Your License Key

The first step is to obtain your license key from MirrorFly

• Step 1: Sign-up for a new MirrorFly account or Sign-in to your existing account.
• Step 2: Once you’ve logged into your account, navigate to the ‘Application Info‘ section in the Overview section. 
• Step 3: You’ll find your License Key. Copy it for the integration. 

Create Android Dependency

Step 4: In the  root build.gradle file of your Android folder, add the following:

allprojects {
 repositories {
 	google()
 	mavenCentral()
 	jcenter()
 	maven {
     	url "https://repo.mirrorfly.com/snapshot/"
 	}
 }
}

Next, add the following dependencies to the app/build.gradle file

android {
	packagingOptions {
 	exclude 'META-INF/AL2.0'
 	exclude 'META-INF/DEPENDENCIES'
 	exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE'
 	exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE.txt'
 	exclude 'META-INF/license.txt'
 	exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE'
 	exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE.txt'
 	exclude 'META-INF/notice.txt'
 	exclude 'META-INF/ASL2.0'
 	exclude 'META-INF/LGPL2.1'
 	exclude("META-INF/*.kotlin_module")
   }
}

Create iOS dependency

Step 5: Add the following code to the end of your ios/Podfile

post_install do |installer|
  installer.pods_project.targets.each do |target|
	flutter_additional_ios_build_settings(target)
	target.build_configurations.each do |config|
  	config.build_settings['IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET'] = '12.1'
  	config.build_settings['ENABLE_BITCODE'] = 'NO'
  	config.build_settings['APPLICATION_EXTENSION_API_ONLY'] = 'No'
  	config.build_settings['BUILD_LIBRARY_FOR_DISTRIBUTION'] = 'YES'
  	config.build_settings["EXCLUDED_ARCHS[sdk=iphonesimulator*]"] = "arm64" 	 
 	end
  end
end

Step 6: Next follow the steps and enable the App Groups capability. 

Goto Project -> Target -> Signing & Capabilities -> Click + at the top left corner -> Search for the capabilities below

App Groups

Create Flutter dependency

Step 7: Add the below dependencies in pubspec.yaml.

dependencies:
  mirrorfly_plugin: ^0.0.7

Step 8: Run the flutter pub get command.  

import 'package:mirrorfly_plugin/mirrorfly.dart';

Initialize MirrorFly Plugin

Inside the main function of your main.dart file, place the below code. 

void main() {
  WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
  Mirrorfly.init(
  	baseUrl: 'https://api-preprod-sandbox.mirrorfly.com/api/v1/',
  	licenseKey: 'Your_Mirrorfly_Licence_Key',
  	iOSContainerID: 'Your_iOS_app_Group_id');
  runApp(const MyApp());
 }

User Registration

Register a user in sandbox live mode using the following code.

Mirrorfly.registerUser(userIdentifier).then((value) {
  // you will get the user registration response
  var userData = registerModelFromJson(value);
}).catchError((error) {
	// Register user failed print throwable to find the exception details.
	debugPrint(error.message);
});

Send a One-to-One Message

Enable sending of messages, using the following code.

var userJid = await Mirrorfly.getJid(username);

Mirrorfly.sendTextMessage(message, jid).then((value) {
  // you will get the message sent success response
  var chatMessage = sendMessageModelFromJson(value);
});

Receive a One-to-One Message

Enable receiving of messages, using the following code.

Mirrorfly.onMessageReceived.listen(result){
  // you will get the new messages
  var chatMessage = sendMessageModelFromJson(result)
}

Conclusion

So, that’s it! Now you know all about building a chat system on your own in just 5 minutes. We’ve covered the need for a chat system, its benefits and the steps to build a complete messaging app. You can also build your chat system on top of other technologies. 

Check out MirrorFly’s Chat SDKs & APIs for

• Android
• iOS
• JavaScript
• React
• Angular

Need more details? Contact our team of experts right away!