TalkingStick

This gem provides easy WebRTC communication in any Rails app.

Goals

• Provide easy group-based (2 or more participants) audio/video communication
• Allow selecting audio or audio+video
• Pluggable signaling delivery technology
• Plug & Play functionality - works out of the box
• Focus on simplicity at the API level, while maximizing the possibilities of integrating communication into existing Rails apps

Installation

Note that TalkingStick requires jQuery, and installs jquery-rails gem as a dependency.

TalkingStick is built as a Rails Engine, and so follows those conventions.

1. Add to Gemfile and update the bundle

   gem 'talking_stick'

   Now run bundle install to download and install the gem.

2. Mount the engine Add the following to your application's config/routes.rb:

   mount TalkingStick::Engine, at: '/talking_stick'

3. Install and Run migration To add the required models to your application, the migrations must be copied and run:

   $ rake talking_stick:install:migrations db:migrate
   

4. Import Assets Add the following to your application's assets/javascripts/application.js:

   //= require talking_stick/application

   And the following to your application's assets/stylesheets/application.scss:

   *= require talking_stick/application

5. [optional] Generate the default participant and room views which are then available for customization. From your app's root directory:

   $ rails generate talking_stick:views
   

6. Videconference! After booting Rails, point your browser to something like http://localhost:3000/talking_stick/rooms. From there you will be able to create and join rooms.

For a better experience, we recommend also using Bootstrap. Easy installation of Bootstrap into Rails is available via twitter-bootstrap-rails.

How it works

• Each room is assigned a unique ID
• Rails app keeps track of participants in each room
• Rails app notifies all room participants when one joins or leaves
• Rails app proxies call setup between participants in each room

Extending TalkingStick