csync / TogetherStream

Summary

Together Stream allows you to stream content with others in real time. The stream host has full control to choose, pause, and skip any video in the queue — synchronizing playback immediately with participants’ devices.

Features

• Create a shared video stream and invite Facebook friends
• Video playback is automatically synchronized between all stream participants
• Control the mood by updating the stream queue - Search or add popular videos from YouTube
• Chat with others about the current video, or suggest something different to be played next
• Invite others to Together Stream via Text or Email

Together Stream is powered by Contextual Sync and IBM Bluemix.

Mininum requirements to run

Xcode 8.2
CocoaPods 1.2.0
Carthage 0.18.1

Setup

Download third party libraries

1. Clone the repo if you have not already done so.
2. Navigate to iOS/TogetherStream run pod install and carthage update --platform iOS

YouTube Configuration

Together Stream uses YouTube videos as the source of content to be shared. To access the YouTube API you will need to generate and embed an API key.

1. Follow the instructions to create an API key here: https://developers.google.com/youtube/registering_an_application
2. Add the key as youtube_api_key to the private.plist located at iOS/TogetherStream/TogetherStream/Configuration

Facebook Configuration

Together Stream uses Facebook to authenticate users and to retrieve user information. To access the Facebook API you will need to create an app and link to it in the iOS application.

1. Follow steps to configure the Facebook App for iOS: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/ios/getting-started/ Note You can skip installing the SDK since it was already installed above.
2. Add the Facebook app ID and secret to backend/config/private/credentials.js

Apple Push Notification Configuration

Together Stream uses push notifications to send stream invites to users with the iOS app.

1. If not already, you will need to be enrolled in the Apple Developer program
2. Generate a push notification certificate and download the .p12 file.
3. Go through these steps to generate a cert.pem and a key.pem https://github.com/node-apn/node-apn/wiki/Preparing-Certificates
4. Add these certificates to backend/config/private/

Google Analytics Configuration

To keep track of analytics, generate a configuration file by following the instructions here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ios/v3/
Note You can skip adding the Google Analytics SDK to the project since it was installed above.

Skip Installation
You can skip installing Google Analytics by removing the method setupGoogleAnalytics in the AppDelegate and sendGoogleAnalyticsEvent in Utilities/Utils.swift

Backend Configuration

1. In backend/config/private/credentials.js replace the accessTokenKey and refreshTokenKey with a unique string exactly 32 characters long. This is used to encrypt the access tokens and refresh tokens in the database.
2. Replace the sessionSecret with a unique string. This is used to encrypt the session tokens.
3. Replace the email userName and domainName with your email address (i.e. userName@domainName), the password with your email password, and the displayUserName and displayDomainName with what you want the emails to be sent from. You can use the same values for here as your actual userName and domainName if you wish.

Frontend Configuration

1. In backend/public/app/credentials.js replace YOUR_PRODUCTION_FACEBOOK_APP_ID and YOUR_DEVELOPMENT_FACEBOOK_APP_ID with the ids for your production and development Facebook app ids respectively.
2. Replace YOUR_YOUTUBE_API_KEY with Youtube's API key provided by Google.
3. Replace the email YOUR_CSYNC_SEVER_IP_ADDRESS and YOUR_CSYNC_SEVER_PORT with your csync server's ip address and port.

Cloud Configuration

1. Go to https://console.ng.bluemix.net and create an account if you do not already have one.
2. Click "Create a Service", choose "Compose for PostgreSQL" and create it.
3. Do the same to create a "New Relic" service.
4. In your cloned repo, open manifest.yml and replace the services with the name of the services you created.
5. Make sure you have the Cloud Foundry CLI installed.
6. Make sure you are logged in to your Bluemix account by running cf login
7. Deploy your app to bluemix with cf push
8. Add the server URL as server_address to private.plist located at iOS/TogetherStream/TogetherStream/Configuration

Contexual Sync Configuration

1. Follow the instructions here to deploy a Contexual Sync container to blumix: https://github.com/csync/csync-server/wiki/Create-a-CSync-Instance-on-Bluemix
   Make sure that when you are creating your container, you add your Facebook credentials in this format:
   "CSYNC_FACEBOOK_ID=asfasfd", "CSYNC_FACEBOOK_SECRET=asfdasdf"
2. Add the public IP of the container as csync_url to the private.plist located at iOS/TogetherStream/TogetherStream/Configuration

Local Configuration (Optional)

Requirements

npm 4.1.2
node 7.5

Instructions

1. If the Xcode command line developer tools are not installed, run xcode-select --install
2. Navigate to your app on Bluemix and click on "Connections" in the left nav bar
3. Click on "View credentials" on the Compose for PostgreSQL service and copy those credentials to backend/config/private/VCAP_SERVICES.json
4. Navigate to backend and run npm install
5. Then run npm start to start the backend, take note of what port it is listening on
6. In the private.plist channel, change your server address to http://localhost:<port number>
7. Follow the instructions here to allow connections to a http address: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31254725/transport-security-has-blocked-a-cleartext-http
8. If you would like to run your Contexual Sync server locally as well, follow the instructions here: https://github.com/csync/csync-server#local-deployment.
   Make sure you change the private.plist in the iOS app to the local Contextual Sync server.

Disclaimer

Together Stream is intended solely for use with an Apple iOS product and intended to be used in conjunction with officially licensed Apple development tools and further customized and distributed under the terms and conditions of your licensed Apple Developer Program.

Licenses

iOS
Non-iOS

Contribution Guide

Want to contribute? Take a look at our CONTRIBUTING.md