---
layout: post
title: "Javascript live chat tutorial: Free alternative to Firebase"
date: 2020-02-10 13:37:00 +0000
tags: tutorial decentralization chat iris
image: https://siriusbusiness.fi/assets/images/posts/chat.png
description: "Need a chat box for your website? Want something more independent and affordable than Firebase? In this super simple tutorial, I'll show you how to build a chat using Iris."
---
Need a chat box for your website? Want something more independent and affordable than Firebase? In this super simple tutorial, I'll show you how to build a chat using [Iris](https://github.com/irislib/iris-lib).
The chat is offline-first and end-to-end encrypted. It is stored and propagated using the distributed database [gun](https://github.com/amark/gun).
No signup of any kind required: just generate a key pair for the chat recipient. Optionally spin up your own free heroku instance to relay messages. **Cost $0**.
# 1. Include gun, sea and iris
* [Gun](https://github.com/amark/gun): a decentralized database
* [Sea](https://gun.eco/docs/SEA): gun's cryptography library
* [Iris](https://github.com/irislib/iris-lib): a library for decentralized social networking
```
```
Note: at the time of writing this, sea.js sha-256 is broken on Safari, so you'll need the patched version from the script tag above.
# 2. Initialize gun
```
var gun = new Gun({peers: ['https://gun-eu.herokuapp.com/gun']})
```
You can connect to someone else's gun node, or you can easily [deploy your own](https://github.com/amark/gun#deploy).
# 3. Create a key for the user (chat initiator)
Generate a new key:
```
var key = await iris.Key.generate()
```
Or generate a key and store it in localStorage:
```
var key = await iris.Key.getDefault()
```
# 4. Get the chat recipient's chat link
1. Go to [iris.to](https://iris.to) ([Github mirror](https://irislib.github.io/iris-messenger/src/)).
2. Click "Copy your chat link"
3. Paste:
```
var chatLink = [chat link here]
```
# 5. Add chat button to document
Iris library comes with an embeddable chat button & UI.
```
iris.Chat.addChatButton({label: 'Live Chat', chatOptions: {gun, key, chatLink}});
```
It's as simple as that! Chats opened by users will now show up for the key / account you created at iris.to.
Feel free to inspect the element and override the stylesheet to match your site's look and feel.
# Full example
```
Live Chat Example
```
Check it out on [Codepen](https://codepen.io/mmalmi/pen/bGddeqE) or [Github](https://irislib.github.io/iris-lib/example/chatbox/)
If you want to improve or customize the functionality, addChatButton() source code can be found [here](https://github.com/irislib/iris-lib/blob/master/src/chat.js).
# Notes
Chats are persisted in users' browsers. Heroku nodes are ephemeral: their filesystem is reset once in a while. If you want to persist the chats on a server, you can add S3 storage to your heroku gun instance, or run a docker gun node.
Disclaimer: Messages are e2e encrypted, but message timestamps currently aren't. In a decentralized network the timestamp and message author are visible to anyone. The library has not been security audited, so don't use it for security critical purposes.