Over the past few weeks there’s been a few things going on behind the scenes. Namely, these include refactoring existing things to make future changes easier and to make things generally more manageable. It also includes some server changes, such as moving the TURN server (media relay server) to a new host which should improve performance hopefully, as well as stability issues across the board.
Load testing has also been performed to stress the system a bit more with simulated traffic. This brought up a number of issues which have also been fixed for the most part, but also gave me a better understanding of what needs to be worked on to improve performance in the future.
As far as feature work goes, a password reset function has been added to recover a lost password.
Load testing
Load testing is essentially running multiple browser windows, loading the same room in each and broadcasting a virtual webcam to create video traffic. This can also be somewhat automated allowing varying degree of users simultaneously, which can be changed depending on the capabilities of the machine I’m running it on.
The advantages of all of this is that it provides a much more efficient way to run multiple cams at once to enable testing things I ordinarily wouldn’t be able to. Most of the issues that came out of this are UI weirdness when cams are broadcasting, plus a few lingering server issues. All of these that were found are now fixed.
Password reset
Since emails were set up a while ago, password reset was a relatively easy addition that also prevents a user being locked out of their account. It works by sending a reset link to your email address, assuming you verified your email, which will redirect you to a reset form. Simple.
This does require a verified email though, so be sure to do that.
Refactoring
In preparation of changing the way state is managed in the room sites, the state management has been split up and it’s logic made simpler and more straight forward. While this shouldn’t change the way the rooms work at all, it makes the code far more manageable and maintainable. Hopefully, this should prevent some issues from sneaking in, as well as making improvements easier to implement. Of course, while this is all very exciting, it’s also necessary to move from being a case of “it just works” to something that can be more scalable and flexible.
Up next
Improving connectivity between the relay server and the media server is something that’s being lingering in the backlog for some time now, so hopefully that’s something I can get done next. I’ll also be either looking at private messaging functionality or the ability to upload images for setting room display pics and user avatars. Aside from this there are some issues with styles in emails that need fixing.
As always, go to https://jumpin.chat and get chatting, invite people etc. etc.
The only way I can make this thing better is having you break it!