Chat-room app for mobile/tablet - is it technically possible?

Question

I am looking to hire a developer to create an app based on an idea I have and in preparation have hit a bit of a roadblock.

For my app, part of the functionality is meant to have a chat-room like feature where by a large number of users can be have live converstations.

Now I have seen this implemented on a 1-to-1 basis and with small groups e.g. WhatsApp and Skype, however I cannot see a app on either iOS, Android or WP7 that allows for much larger 20-30 person chats. The application should not be limited to people that you keep on a contacts list, the application would allow free chat between anyone with the application but filtered by different chat rooms.

Is there a technical limitation with mobile development that would make this difficult/impossible or am I just not looking hard enough and this functionality does already exist?

A good test of my question would be, could you create a replicate of the chat.stackoverflow.com pages in a mobile app? I am unfamiliar with mobile app development myself but would have anticipated that something like a chat-room app would already exist.

Thanks, James

Answer 1

it's possible and very easy if you are going to send messages through web server. consider in room there are 3 persons,and you have 3 ids,for example 1,2,3 . User's room id can be for example 2_3,if his/her id is 1 .and when sends message,he/she also should send 2_3. Your application can do http request for example with 1 minute timeout for receiving message(you can use comet technology).

Answer 2

Put simply, yes it is possible. Plenty of chat apps exist for android already, search the market for "irc".

Answer 3

You may use open source to implement it. I recommend php or paython chat rooms.

The down side is that you will need a server to install it and shared hosting have issue to install it on their server. So the cost is the server side.

There are many services out there that can be used for a chatroom and to my mind it is far more reliable and quick to implement.

Try: RumbleTalk, C-Box, Chatango, Xat or simpleChat

Answer 4

Video enabled chat (video calling) Video chat or video calling is essentially streaming both audio and video inputs asynchronously between two or more end users. Video calling is a great way to have productive and visual communication between your users hence high popularity of this feature in QB developers community.

How it works QuickBlox SDK client library works with input sources (camera, microphone), codecs, compression and then the data is streamed peer-to-peer between end users. This way video calling doesn't impact the server much so the system is highly scalable. Server however enables the handshake between end users before streaming starts to take place and also it resolves NAT traversal in case configuration of networks and firewalls between end users makes call impossible otherwise. This is done with the help of QB STUN/TURN server.

Typically video calling is used along with 1:1 / IM textual chat communication but there are use cases (such is in gaming or when walking / driving for example) where they are used on their own.

Typical settings

video quality audio quality timeout interval Code samples http://quickblox.com/developers/VideoChat#SDK_.26_code_samples

Links we find useful: Mobile chat app development