KC Chat Backend

This is the server backend that runs the live chat at mattkc.com/live. It is written in C++ and relies heavily on Qt 5+ and MySQL/MariaDB.

Building

The server should compile on any system with CMake and Qt 5+ available. It requires the following Qt modules: Core, Sql (MySQL/MariaDB), Network, and WebSockets. Once you have those installed through whatever means are available for your OS, building should be as simple as:

$ git clone https://github.com/itsmattkc/kcchat-server.git
$ cd kcchat-server
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make

Binaries (Ubuntu 20.04)

Binaries for Ubuntu 20.04 are available from the Actions tab. To run on Ubuntu 20.04, you will need the following dependencies installed from apt: libqt5core5a, libqt5network5, libqt5sql5-mysql, libqt5websockets5.

Quick Start

This assumes you already have the server compiled.

1. Install doc/initial.sql into a MySQL/MariaDB database. This can be done with the following command (assuming a database named kcchat has been created, this can be renamed to whatever you want):

mysql kcchat < initial.sql

2. Rename or copy doc/config.json.sample to config.json and place in the same directory as the executable. Open config.json in your preferred editor and start configuring it:

Configuration (config.json)

1. Enter the MySQL/MariaDB details necessary for accessing your database into db_host, db_port, db_user, db_pass, and db_name.

2. Enter a valid Google cloud/developer client ID and secret into youtube_client_id and youtube_client_secret. This is currently the only option for authenticating users (though more will be added later).

3. Optionally, configure the bot's in-chat display name and color with bot_name and bot_color.

4. Optionally, set SSL keys/certificates with ssl_key, ssl_crt, and (optionally) ssl_ca to run the server on the secured wss:// protocol rather than ws://. Many browsers require this if the server isn't running on localhost.

5. Optionally, enter a valid PayPal developer client ID/secret into paypal_client_id and paypal_client_secret to enable donations. For testing/development in PayPal Sandbox, leave paypal_live set to false (Sandbox-specific client ID/secret will also be expected). To start accepting real monetary donations in production, set the client ID/secret to live (i.e. non-sandbox) credentials, and set paypal_live to true.

6. Optionally, set a timezone to a valid IANA ID representing the timezone of the streamer. This is used to display the streamer's local time correctly with the !time command regardless of the server's timezone.

Warning: Unstable

This code is still under development. The API/communication protocol is not currently considered stable and may change without warning. A stable release/protocol/API may be released at a later date.