Book Image

Getting Started with WebRTC

By : Rob Manson
Book Image

Getting Started with WebRTC

By: Rob Manson

Overview of this book

WebRTC delivers web-based real-time communication and is set to revolutionize our view of what the Web really is. Streaming audio and video from browser to browser, as well as opening raw access to the camera and microphone, is already creating a whole new dynamic web. WebRTC also introduces real-time data channels that will allow interaction with dynamic data feeds from sensors and other devices. This really is a great time to be a web developer! Getting Started with WebRTC provides all of the practical information you need to quickly understand what WebRTC is, how it works, and how you can add it to your own web applications. It includes clear working examples designed to help you get started building your own WebRTC-enabled applications right away. Getting Started with WebRTC will guide you through the process of creating your own WebRTC application that can be applied in a number of different real-world situations, using well documented and clearly explained code examples. You will learn how to quickly and easily create a practical peer-to-peer video chat application, an audio only call option, and how a Web-Socket-based signaling server can also be used to enable real-time text-based chat. You will also be shown how this same server and application structure can easily be extended to include simple drag-and-drop file sharing with transfer updates and thumbnail previews.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Getting Started with WebRTC
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Adding an audio only flow to the signaling server


The WebSocket-based signaling server we developed in node.js was designed in an abstract way, so that it only used call_token to route signals from one user to another. Other than that, it doesn't have any specific dependencies upon the contents or type of signaling messages at all. This means that no updates to the signaling server are required to adapt it to support audio only calls.

The only change required is to update the name of the source HTML file it reads in using the fs package. Just change this to basic_audio_call.html to match our new HTML user interface:

fs.readFile("basic_audio_call.html", function(error, data) {

Once you have made this simple change, just restart the signaling server; for example, by typing node webrtc_signal_server.js on the command line, and then you are ready to start making your audio only call.