📮 INBOX

Inbox makes it easy to setup a WebRTC HTTPS signaling server

Table of Contents

• 📮 INBOX
  • Features
  • Install
    • Download latest binary
    • Compile from source
    • Docker image
    • Free public instances
  • Usage
  • Tutorial
  • API Documentation
  • Purpose
  • How is it working?
  • The General Concept
  • The implementation
  • How to run the example
  • Benchmarks
  • Contribute
  • License

Features

• HTTP and HTTPS mode
• Allows period polling or long polling
• In-memory state, no need for persistent storage
• Allows Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
• Serves Static files from a directory
• Allows limiting request body size and headers size
• Flexible way to limit maximum number of messages per user

Install

Download latest binary

You can download the latest version from releases for your system/architecture

Compile from source

• Have the Go toolchain installed
• Clone the repository and compile and install the binary to $GOBIN

  git clone [email protected]:emad-elsaid/inbox.git
  cd inbox
  go install cmd/inbox.go
  

Docker image

• If you want to run it in http mode

  docker run --rm -it -p 3000:3000 emadelsaid/inbox ./inbox --https=false
  

• You can use generate a self signed SSL certificate, or if you already have a certificate if you want to have HTTPS enabled

  docker run --rm -it -v /path/to/cert/directory:/cert -p 3000:3000 emadelsaid/inbox ./inbox --server-cert=/cert/server.crt --server-key=/cert/server.key
  

Free public instances

The following are public instances you can use instead of running your own:

• https://connect.inboxgo.org/inbox Official public instance

Usage

  -bind string
        a bind for the http server (default "0.0.0.0:3000")
  -cleanup-interval int
        Interval in seconds between server cleaning up inboxes (default 1)
  -cors
        Allow CORS
  -https
        Run server in HTTPS mode or HTTP (default true)
  -inbox-capacity int
        Maximum number of messages each inbox can hold (default 100)
  -inbox-timeout int
        Number of seconds for the inbox to be inactive before deleting (default 60)
  -long-polling
        Allow blocking get requests until a message is available in the inbox (default true)
  -max-body-size int
        Maximum request body size in bytes (default 1048576)
  -max-header-size int
        Maximum request body size in bytes (default 1048576)
  -public string
        Directory path of static files to serve (default "public")
  -server-cert string
        HTTPS server certificate file (default "server.crt")
  -server-key string
        HTTPS server private key file (default "server.key")

Tutorial

If you're new to writing WebRTC application I recommend you make yourself familiar with the basic concepts from google, For a tutorial about how to use Inbox I got you covered from installation to Javascript communication Read more

API Documentation

• Swagger documentation is under /docs/swagger.yml
• You can show it online here

Purpose

• When building a WebRTC based project you need a way to signal peers.
• One of the ways to signal peers is to use a central HTTP server
• Alice uses Inbox to pass WebRTC offer to Bob
• Bob gets the offer uses Inbox to send a WebRTC answer to Alice
• Alice and Bob use Inbox to exchange ICE Candidates information
• When Alice and Bob have enough ICE candidates they disconnect from Inbox and connect to each other directly

How is it working?

• The server works in HTTPS mode by default unless -https=false passed to it.
• If you wish to generate self signed SSL certificate server.key and server.crt:

openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:secretpassword -out server.pass.key 2048
openssl rsa -passin pass:secretpassword -in server.pass.key -out server.key
openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
openssl x509 -req -sha256 -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt

• it uses Go to run a HTTPS server on port 3000 that serves ./public directory
• The local server has 1 other route /inbox for the sender and receiver to signal each other the webRTC offer and answer.

The General Concept

Inbox acts as a temporary mailbox between peers, the server creates the inbox upon the first interaction with the user and deletes it after a duration of inactivity which is 1 minute by default Read more

The implementation

• This is a HTTPS server written in Go
• No third party dependencies
• Stores all data in memory in one big memory structure
• Every second the server removes inboxes exceeded timeouts
• Serves /public in current working directory as static files
• CORS is disabled by default

How to run the example

• Install Go
• Clone this repository git clone [email protected]:emad-elsaid/inbox.git
• Run the server go run ./cmd/inbox.go
• Open https://your-ip-address:3000/send.html on the camera machine
• Open https://your-ip-address:3000/receive.html on the receiver machine
• Choose the camera from the list on the sender and press start button
• The receiver should display the camera shortly after

Benchmarks

Inbox inherits the high speed of Go and as it uses the RAM as storage its mostly a CPU bound process, the project comes with go benchmarks you can test it on your hardware yourself, You can checkout my CPU specs and benchmark numbers on my machine here Read more

Contribute

Expected contribution flow will be as follows:

• Read and understand the code
• Make some changes related to your idea
• Open a PR to validate you're in the right direction, describe what you're trying to do
• Continue working on your changes until it's fully implemented
• I'll merge it and release a new version

License

MIT License (c) Emad Elsaid