Creating a User-Friendly Web Chat with Spring Boot and Social Login
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Introduction to Building a Web Chat Application
This article is part of a series that delves into creating a Web Chat Application integrated with social login features using Spring Boot. In our introductory piece, we'll outline the key sections that will be covered.
Here’s an overview of what you can expect to build by the end of this tutorial:
In this section, we will provide a comprehensive overview of the project and offer detailed instructions on setting up the Spring Boot environment. This includes a discussion of necessary dependencies and the overall project structure.
Let’s dive in!
Project Overview
We aim to create a straightforward Web Chat application that is both user-friendly and features a single public chat room. Below, you will find mockups that illustrate our vision, highlighting the features we plan to implement.
To facilitate a better user experience and streamline the login process, our Web Chat will support logging in via GitHub or Google accounts. This method of authentication is designed to provide a smooth and user-friendly login experience.
After logging in successfully, users will be able to customize their chat experience by choosing an avatar and selecting a nickname before joining the chat room.
Inside the chat room, users will engage by sending and reading messages, which will be displayed prominently in the comment feed for all participants. An online user column will also be included, making it easy to see who is currently online and available for conversation.
Prerequisites for the Tutorial
To follow along with this tutorial, ensure that you have Java 17 or a higher version installed on your machine.
Setting Up the Spring Boot Application
Let’s create our Spring Boot application using Spring Initializr. For this project, we’ll set the group name to com.example and use simple-web-chat as the artifact name. The necessary dependencies include:
- Thymeleaf: A modern server-side Java template engine suitable for web and standalone environments, enabling proper rendering of HTML content in browsers and facilitating static prototype creation.
- Spring Web: A framework for building web applications, including RESTful APIs, utilizing Spring MVC. It uses Apache Tomcat as the default embedded container, providing a robust foundation for web-based solutions.
- WebSocket: A technology supporting real-time, bidirectional communication between clients and servers in Servlet-based applications. Combined with SockJS and STOMP, WebSocket allows for the creation of interactive web applications.
We will be utilizing Spring Boot version 3.1.5 along with Java 17. You can find all the setup details at the provided link. Click the GENERATE button to download a zip file, extract it to your desired folder, and open the simple-web-chat project in your IDE.
The initial project structure generated by Spring Initializr should look like this:
??? HELP.md ??? mvnw ??? mvnw.cmd ??? pom.xml ??? src
??? main
? ??? java
? ? ??? com
? ? ??? example
? ? ??? simplewebchat
? ? ??? SimpleWebChatApplication.java
? ??? resources
? ??? application.properties
? ??? static
? ??? templates
??? test
??? java
??? com
??? example
??? simplewebchat
??? SimpleWebChatApplicationTests.java
To keep our project organized, we will establish three essential packages: security, service, ui, and websocket. Please create these packages now.
By the end of this step, your project structure should resemble the following:
??? HELP.md ??? mvnw ??? mvnw.cmd ??? pom.xml ??? src
??? main
? ??? java
? ? ??? com
? ? ??? example
? ? ??? simplewebchat
? ? ??? SimpleWebChatApplication.java
? ? ??? security
? ? ??? service
? ? ??? ui
? ? ??? websocket
? ??? resources
? ??? application.properties
? ??? static
? ??? templates
??? test
??? java
??? com
??? example
??? simplewebchat
??? SimpleWebChatApplicationTests.java
Next Steps
We will move on to implementing the backend of the Web Chat application.
Building a Web Chat with Social Login using Spring Boot: Backend Implementation
In the upcoming sections, we hope you find this Web Chat tutorial series informative and engaging!
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