Show HN: Convos, a OSS persistent IRC web client built using Mojo and Redis

[EvanDotPro]

I suppose it's only a matter of time before one of these persistent web clients / services converts me, but my current setup works surprisingly well:

- Irssi + screen on my server.

- IrssiNotifier [1] for push notifications to my Android phone when I'm hilighted/PM'd.

- Connect from my phone using Irssi ConnectBot [2], which is just an SSH client that supports gestures for interacting with Irssi (swipe left/right to switch channels, double tap to go to a hilight, swipe up/down to scroll the channel log, etc).

- Connection via mosh [3] instead of plain SSH. Mosh uses UDP, which allows persistent connections when switching from Wi-Fi to cellular data, or when data connections are spotty, etc. On my phone, I actually use a patched version of Irssi ConnectBot [4] which supports mosh.

That said, as well as this works, I've always kept an envious eye on browser-based implementations like this. I love thinking about all the fun integrations that would be possible to make IRC a much more rich experience: automatically showing YouTube thumbnails/descriptions, expanding shortened links, hover-to-show image links, etc.

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fi.iki.murgo.i... [2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.woltage.ir... [3]: http://mosh.mit.edu/ [4]: http://dan.drown.org/android/mosh/

[fooqux]

I might give that setup a shot. I've been using ZNC + AndChat for awhile, but some of the warts in it are starting to really annoy me; namely it's multiple-server functionality.

I typically dislike having to run things in screen though. It's not that bloody hard to create a daemon in linux.

[cjstewart88]

I had fun a year or so ago messing around with a web based IRC client. I never got around to adding bouncer like functionality or a few other key pieces that would make it my everyday IRC client. A few key pieces lacking in my project are: auto complete nicks, auto reconnect when connection is lost, etc. But it was fun and thats why I did it, cool project and good luck keeping it going!

My project is in node.js: https://github.com/cjstewart88/nirc

[jhthorsen]

Convos has auto complete for commands and nicks, and the auto reconnect should work, though I think it's hard making good tests for it.

[Lazare]

So... an open-source, self-hosted version of IRCCloud, with the server written in Perl?

I'm a bit too happy with IRCCloud to switch, so I'm not really in the target audience. Still, I don't run across Perl projects too often these days; nice to see some variety. :)

[jhthorsen]

Got any killer features that we should add to Convos?

[Kiro]

Any alternatives to IRCCloud? It's invite only.

[Aaronneyer]

Nice! I had been thinking about making something similar. There are very few quality web IRC clients out there. I had a chromebook for a while, and I was stuck using Mibbit which is pretty terrible.

[dhamidi]

I didn't know that Mojolicious supports hot deployment...thanks for linking to the deployment guide!

[glomph]

See also kiwiric. ALthough they have yet to to deliver on persistence.

[kayoone]

last time i worked with Perl was 2007, but Mojolicious looks awesome!