BARCELONA | Oct2025-1 | June Monton| Decomposition | Sprint 2 | Chat App - #112
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juneMonton wants to merge 9 commits into
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BARCELONA | Oct2025-1 | June Monton| Decomposition | Sprint 2 | Chat App#112juneMonton wants to merge 9 commits into
juneMonton wants to merge 9 commits into
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Express + Socket.IO backend with an in-memory message history, and a vanilla JS frontend. Supports the three required behaviours plus an online-user count and join announcements. Notable choices: - Message history and individual messages are both capped so a small free-tier host cannot be pushed out of memory. - The client re-sends its username on every connect, not just the first, because hosts drop idle sockets and the server keys users by socket id. - The chat box is cleared before replaying history, so a reconnect does not render the backlog twice.
Netlify serves the static frontend; the Socket.IO backend needs a long-lived process with WebSocket support, which Netlify does not provide, so it goes to Render instead.
Render assigns the backend URL when the service is created, so it cannot be committed ahead of the first deploy. A Netlify build step now writes front-end/config.js from the BACKEND_URL environment variable, which keeps the deployed URL in Netlify's UI and out of source. The script strips a trailing slash and fails the build on a value with no scheme, so a typo surfaces as a red build rather than a site that loads but never connects. With no variable set it emits an empty value, which is exactly what local development needs, and reproduces the committed config.js byte for byte.
The URL moved to a build-time environment variable, so the old message sent anyone debugging a dead chat to the wrong place.
A build that cannot see the BACKEND_URL variable was blanking the address, which is indistinguishable from a build that never ran. The committed value now stands unless the variable overrides it.
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Description
Built and deployed a real-time chat application using Express and Socket.IO. Users can send messages, view chat history, and receive new messages instantly without refreshing the page. The frontend and backend are deployed separately and communicate over a WebSocket connection.
Changelist
Deployed Links
Deployed FrontEnd - https://june-chat-app.netlify.app
Deployed BackEnd - https://world-chat-backend-zlha.onrender.com
Notes