Show HN: Convos – Self hosted IRC chat | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Convos – Self hosted IRC chat

convos.by

45 pointsserhack_16 comments

Am I able to login as a user using my own client (circe on Emacs, for example)?

This is very cool. I’ve been using TheLounge for a long time. How do you see Convo evolving going forward? One thing I think could be made easier is the ability to offer it as SAAS to users, so I’d host it somewhere and make logging in and getting to my session easy for users who are not me.

Logging in and adding users got a lot easier in version 2.0: https://convos.by/2019/11/24/convos-one-point-two.html

The next version of Convos (which will hopefully be released this week) adds support for LDAP, which might also help you manage users.

You can have a look at our issue tracker for what is planned for the future versions of Convos: https://github.com/nordaaker/convos/milestones

I will soon update the webpage with a longer list of features: https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos/issues/445

Very cool. I'm working on a service that add apps to my email inbox. Is there a way you think we could self host this and create accounts / link accounts automatically for our users? I'd love to have an irc client that can run in an iframe and I'd access it by clicking a tab.

I would very much like this as well, but "kiosk" mode is currently not planned. Might start consider it again after https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos/issues/414 is closed... Please do open an issue where you describe what you think is required for Convos to work from within your email inbox, or join #convos on freenode and have a chat with us.

Perfect! I just replied to the issue too. We don't even need email auth. As long as there's a way to login / create a user in the back, we can handle auth.

I don't really care so much, as long as it can be used with IRC, and the web page should specify which IRC server to use that is readable even if JavaScript and CSS are disabled, and even if the request headers have unusual values.

I don't understand what you mean about "web page should specify which IRC server to use". I'm also confused about notion about "request headers".

I highly doubt Convos will ever support chatting without JavaScript and CSS enabled.

I am not suggesting that Convos should support chatting without JavaScript and CSS enabled. I am suggesting that users who wish to use IRC should be allowed to do so, and if given the link to the web page, should be able to read it to determine what IRC server to use, regardless of whether or not JavaScript and/or CSS and/or images are enabled.

Too many web pages say IRC, and then if you select it just says "You must activate JavaScript to use IRC", without telling you what IRC server and channel to use, and that is no good.

Wouldn't you be the one choosing the IRC server? I thought the point of this was if you wanted to run your own IRC bouncer with a web client, similar to a self hosted IRCCloud.

I suppose so, yes, but it says "multiuser chat application". However, it also seems that you are correct about you would run your own and just use it by yourself; this is a bit confusing perhaps.

However, I looked again and it also mentions an archive, which can be useful (for public channels) even if you are not using the web interface to connect to IRC. The archives should probably be available (perhaps configurable, in case you are using it privately and do not want public archives) even to those not using the web client.

The documentation mentions invite links and new user registration, so it does seem like it can be used for multiple users. Still, some users will want to use IRC directly (or might want to use IRC for communication but use the archives). Therefore, please fix it so that the IRC server to use (the value of window.__convos.default_connection, as far as the JavaScript code is concerned) is visible regardless of JavaScript/CSS enabled/disabled.

For archiving, I recommend supporting the "esologs" raw format, which works as follows: Each line begins with < or > indicating the direction of the message (where < means server to client and > means client to server), followed by a space, UNIX timestamp, space, microseconds, space, and then the full contents of the IRC command, uninterpreted. File names are like "YYYY-MM-DD-raw.txt" where "YYYY-MM-DD" is replaced by the date. For logs of an entire month, the format is "YYYY-MM-raw.txt". Replace "-raw.txt" with ".html" for formatted logs. (The esoteric programming IRC uses this format.)

I can't understand if it's an IRC web client only, or both a client and server.

It is an IRC client exposing a HTTP server to be able to use IRC from a browser.

The server part of Convos is like an IRC bouncer, but instead of supporting the IRC protocol from the client side, it has a HTTP/WebSocket interface that talks to the Convos frontend.

So Convos keeps your connection, so even if you close the web browser, you will still receive messages and you can see the history once you open your browser again.

If you stop the Convos server, then you will also be disconnected from the IRC server.

Perl huh, now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...

We decided to use Perl, because of the real-time web framework Mojolicious - https://mojolicious.org/. It makes developing web apps a breeze.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com