Townhall

Cannot wait to deploy the Townhall application? You can directly click below Deploy to Heroku button.

To deploy yourself, you can scroll down to Deployment section.

Once the application is deployed, you can access it using below information

• Presenter -- https://{url}/presenter
• Participant -- https://{url}/participant
• Moderator -- https://{url}/moderator

Replace the url with your deployed URL. If you are using Heroku to deploy, the url might looks like appname.herokuapp.com.

Introduction

The townhall application is a reference code where you can easily deploy. This features.

• Multiple Presenter -- you can have multiple person presenting in the townhall
• Multiple Participant -- participant will be on mute by default. Participant can only hear presenter and moderator
• Single Moderator -- moderator has a full control of presenter and participant video and audio.

Before you deploy this application, make you have Vonage Video API account with API Key and Secret. Because we will explore how great Vonage Video API is.

Environment Variables

You need to setup some environment variables

• PORT -- this variable works only for manual deployment. Heroku deployment will automatically fill the value.
• API_KEY -- your Vonage Video API - API Key
• API_SECRET -- your Vonage Video API - API Secret
• DATABASE_URL -- this variable works only for manual deployment. Heroku deployment will automatically fill the value.
• REACT_APP_ROOM_NAME -- your room name for your townhall
• REACT_APP_PRESENTER_PIN -- pin number for presenter to join in
• REACT_APP_MODERATOR_PIN -- pin number for moderator to join in
• REACT_APP_PARTICIPANT_PIN -- pin number for participant to join in

Architecture

This townhall application contains backend and frontend. However, the backend needs a database to store session information. You need to install postgres for the database. Any other than postgres will not work.

• Backend -- we use express
• Frontend -- we use ReactJS
• Database -- we use postgres

Deployment

This section is for manual deployment. It means you need to have a

• Linux machine with SSH. Make sure you can SSH to your machine.
• NodeJS installed
• yarn or npm installed
• postgres installed

Once you satisfy the requirements, you can proceed to below steps.

• Clone and navigate inside this repository.
• Rename .env.example to .env and fill in the environment variable.
• Build the package by typing yarn build if you are using yarn or npm run build if you are using npm
• Start the server yarn start:express:prod or npm run start:express:prod
• Open your web browser. For example http://localhost:5000

The local deployment has been done. You can use various technology such as ngrok or nginx to make it public. Furthermore, for this demo to run smoothly in public, you need https or SSL.

ngrok will automatically grant you SSL certificate. However, if nginx was choose as public deployment, you can use Let's Encrypt to get your free SSL certificate.