Real-Time Chat App with Socket.IO and Node.js

Learn how to create real-time, bi-directional chat applications using Socket.IO and Node.js

Photo by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash

Socket.IO is a JavaScript library that enables real-time, bi-directional communication between web clients and servers. Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside a web browser. With Socket.IO and Node.js, we can create a powerful and scalable real-time chat application.

Let’s learn how to create a real-time chat application using Socket.IO and Node.js.

Step 1: Set up the environment

First, we need to set up our development environment. We will need to have Node.js installed on our computer. We can download Node.js from the official website: https://nodejs.org/en/download/

Next, create a new directory for our project and initialize a new Node.js project by running the following command:

mkdir real-time-chat-application
cd real-time-chat-application
npm init -y

Step 2: Install dependencies

Now, we need to install the required dependencies for our project. We will need to install the socket.io and express libraries. Run the following…