babble.client 1.3b3

Babble: Instant Messaging for Plone

Babble is an instant messaging service for Plone. It consists of babble.client as the Plone front-end and babble.server, a Zope2 messaging service, for the backend.

The client consists of an Online contacts portlet and modal chatboxes that make extensive use of JQuery and Ajax techniques.

Communication between the client and server is done by polling via XML-RPC and JSON.

Features:

• Remembers open chat windows on page reload

• Chat windows can be minimized

• New messages automatically opens chat window

• An ‘online users’ portlet provides a list of currently online users

• Configurable polling intervals

• URLs recieved via chat messages are clickable

• Requests to the messaging service must be password authenticated

• Can be integrated with the ActionBar of actionbar.panel

• Can run on a different server than the messaging service

• Well tested.

Compatibility:

Tested to work with Plone 3.3 and Plone 4

Quickly setting up a demonstration:

There is a demo egg available on Plone.org and pypi, with which you can quickly set up a new Babble configured Plone 4 site for demonstration purposes.

See the README of the babble.demo package for instructions on how to set it up.

If you however want to configure the system yourself, then read the next section.

Configuration:

babble.client needs a running zope instance with a configured babble.server messaging service. (see the babble.server README)

NOTE: It’s recommended that you run the babble.server messaging service in a separate server or Zeo Client. Running the client and server in the same instance sometimes causes the browser (and probably Zope/ZPublisher) to become unresponsive.

IMPORTANT: The babble.server ‘Chat Service’ object must be created in the Zope root of a Zope instance, not in any Plone root.

The client is configured via the portal_chat tool in the ZMI:

• Service name: This is the name of babble.server’s ‘Chat Service’ object that you created in the Zope root of the Zope instance you will be using as your message server.

• Host: This is the hostname of the server running the ‘Chat Service’.

• Port: This is the port number of the server running the ‘Chat Service’.

• Username: This is the username of the Zope user that you used to create the ‘Chat Service’.

• Password: This is the password of the Zope user that you used to create the ‘Chat Service’.

How do I start using it?

Make sure that babble.client is installed via Plone’s control panel, or the portal_quickinstaller tool in the ZMI (Zope management interface).

In Plone, go to the portlets manage page. In the dropdown of addable portlets, there should now be a new types of portlet, Online contacts.

Add this portlet. If you have more than one person currently using the site, you should see them appear in this portlet.

Note: When you are running your portal_javascripts registry is in debug mode (or when you are running ‘./bin/instance fg’ in Plone4), then the Online contacts portlet will show all the registered users, and not just the online ones, to make debugging easier.

Simply click on the user in the portlet, and a chatbox will appear in the bottom right of the page.

Now start babbling!

actionbar.panel integration:

You can use the chat service with a floating toolbar at the bottom (as was popularised with Facebook).

There exists an add-on for actionbar.panel, that provides this functionality.

Simply install actionbar.babble (which will pull in actionbar.panel), to receive a bottom bar on which the chat windows will dock.

Troubleshooting:

1). I get a ‘connection error’ message inside the chat window

The ‘connection error’ message happens whenever the chat client (babble.client) cannot communicate with the chat server (babble.server).

This is usually because the chat server is not running (i.e when you restart the zope server).

Check that the chat server is running and that your settings in the portal_chat tool are correct.

2). Plone freezes or locks up completely and I have to restart the instance before this goes away

This happens when there is only one Zope instance that has both the chat client and the chat server running in it.

The chat client ‘polls’ the chat server to find new messages. If the server stops responding because it is overwhelmed or because it is restarted, then the browser hangs forever as it waits for a response, even after Zope was restarted.

The best solution is to run the chat server in a separate dedicated Zeo instance not being used for anything else.

Make sure to change the port in the portal_chat tool to point to this Zeo instance.

A second thing you can do, is to increase the minimum poll time in the portal_chat tool, for example from 3000 ms to 6000 ms or more.

This will of course mean that messages can take longer to appear for the conversation partners.

3). Nothing happens when I click on a contact’s name in the portlet

Check the debug output on Firebug for any clues. If you get messages that something is undefined, such as “jQuery is not defined”, then the ordering in portal_javascripts is probably wrong.

chat.js, jquery.ba-dotimeout.min.js, jquery.cookie.js and quicksearch.js must all come after jquery.js.

In Plone 3, you might have collective.js.jquery installed, in which case a newer jQuery version is installed and jquery.js is disabled. Make sure that the newer library is before the above mentioned scipts.

4). Babble doesn’t work with deliverance of collection.xdv

That is because deliverance and collective.xdv need to be told to ignore the ajax calls that Babble makes.

For collective.xdv, add the following to the Unstyled paths textbox in the @@xdv-settings configuration view (found via Site setup):

^.*/@@babblechat.*$
^.*/@@render_chat_box

For deliverance, you’ll need proxy declarations similar to the following in your rules.xml file:

<proxy path="regex:^.*/@@babblechat.*$">
    <dest href="http://localhost:8080/VirtualHostBase/http/localhost:5099/MySite/VirtualHostRoot/" />
</proxy>

<proxy path="regex:^.*/@@render_chat_box">
    <dest href="http://localhost:8080/VirtualHostBase/http/localhost:5099/MySite/VirtualHostRoot/" />
</proxy>

Where MySite is your Plone site’s name, running on 8080 and the deliverance proxy on 5099.

Contact:

Is there information lacking in this readme? Contact me with questions or suggestions: - brand@syslab.com

TODO:

• Currently Javascript tests can’t run anymore because of DTML, therefore, consider replacing dtml with collective.xrtresource.

• Add broadcasting (send to all) functionality

• Add tests for URL detection in messages

1.3b3 (2010-04-28)

• Fixed repeating page section rendering problem [jcbrand]

• Added URL recognition [jcbrand]

1.3b2 (2010-04-17)

• New polling solution via the doTimeout plugin instead of setTimeout [jcbrand]

• Fixed ajax calls when in portal_factory as context [jcbrand]

• Made the ‘Who’s online?’ portlet’s heading editable [jcbrand]

1.3b1 (2010-04-12)

• Updated the README [jcbrand]

1.2 (2010-04-09)

• Removed the option from portal_chat to bypass XML-RPC [jcbrand]

• Bugfixes in tests and fixed getConnection AttributeError for utils.py [jcbrand]

1.1 (2010-04-08)

• Tweaked jsregistry.xml to gain Plone3 compatibility [jcbrand]

1.0 (2010-04-08)

• Initial release [jcbrand]

Contributors

• JC Brand <brand@syslab.com>

• Cillian de Roíste <deroiste@syslab.com>