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ChatRoomLocal

Get Started with ASP.NET SignalR: a Chat Room Example

In this sample you'll learn how to use ASP.NET SignalR to build a chat room application.

This tutorial is to give you a brief introduction about how ASP.NET SignalR works, if you're already familiar with it, you can skip this sample. ASP

Please be noted this sample is based on the ASP.NET version. You can find detailed tutorials talking about ASP.NET SignalR in SignalR Docs Site.

Our chat room is a web page application that anyone can login to and chat with other users in the room.

When you open the application you'll be asked for your name:

chat-room-1

Then you can send a message and everyone in the room can see it:

chat-room-2

Prerequisites

Let's implement this feature step by step.

  1. In Visual Studio, create an ASP.NET Web Application

    create the application

  2. In the New ASP.NET Project window, leave Empty selected and click Create Project.

    select template

  3. Open the Tools | Library Package Manager | Package Manager Console and run command:

    Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR
  4. In Solution Explorer, right-click the project, select Add | SignalR Hub Class (v2). Name the class ChatHub.cs and add it to the project. This step creates the ChatHub class and adds to the project a set of script files and assembly references that support SignalR.

    new hub

  5. Replace the code in the new ChatHub class with the following code.

    using System;
    using System.Web;
    using Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR;
    namespace ChatRoom
    {
        public class ChatHub : Hub
        {
            public void Send(string name, string message)
            {
                // Call the broadcastMessage method to update clients.
                Clients.All.broadcastMessage(name, message);
            }
        }
    }
  6. In Solution Explorer, right-click the project, then click Add | OWIN Startup Class. Name the new class Startup and click OK.

    new startup class

  7. Change the connects of the new Startup class to the following.

    using System;
    using System.Threading.Tasks;
    using Microsoft.Owin;
    using Owin;
    
    [assembly: OwinStartup(typeof(ChatRoom.Startup))]
    
    namespace ChatRoom
    {
        public class Startup
        {
            public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
            {
                // Any connection or hub wire up and configuration should go here
                app.MapSignalR();
            }
        }
    }
  8. In Solution Explorer, right-click the project, then click Add | HTML Page. Name the new page index.html.

    Note

    You might need to change the version numbers for the references to JQuery and SignalR libraries

  9. Replace the default code in the HTML page with the following code.

    Note

    A later version of the SignalR scripts may be installed by the package manager. Verify that the script references below correspond to the versions of the script files in the project

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head>
        <title>SignalR Simple Chat</title>
        <style type="text/css">
            .container {
                background-color: #99CCFF;
                border: thick solid #808080;
                padding: 20px;
                margin: 20px;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div class="container">
            <input type="text" id="message" />
            <input type="button" id="sendmessage" value="Send" />
            <input type="hidden" id="displayname" />
            <ul id="discussion"></ul>
        </div>
        <!--Script references. -->
        <!--Reference the jQuery library. -->
        <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.4.min.js"></script>
        <!--Reference the SignalR library. -->
        <script src="Scripts/jquery.signalR-2.4.3.js"></script>
        <!--Reference the autogenerated SignalR hub script. -->
        <script src="signalr/hubs"></script>
        <!--Add script to update the page and send messages.-->
        <script type="text/javascript">
            $(function () {
                // Declare a proxy to reference the hub.
                var chat = $.connection.chatHub;
                // Create a function that the hub can call to broadcast messages.
                chat.client.broadcastMessage = function (name, message) {
                    // Html encode display name and message.
                    var encodedName = $('<div />').text(name).html();
                    var encodedMsg = $('<div />').text(message).html();
                    // Add the message to the page.
                    $('#discussion').append('<li><strong>' + encodedName
                        + '</strong>:&nbsp;&nbsp;' + encodedMsg + '</li>');
                };
                // Get the user name and store it to prepend to messages.
                $('#displayname').val(prompt('Enter your name:', ''));
                // Set initial focus to message input box.
                $('#message').focus();
                // Start the connection.
                $.connection.hub.start().done(function () {
                    $('#sendmessage').click(function () {
                        // Call the Send method on the hub.
                        chat.server.send($('#displayname').val(), $('#message').val());
                        // Clear text box and reset focus for next comment.
                        $('#message').val('').focus();
                    });
                });
            });
        </script>
    </body>
    </html>
  10. Save All for the project.

  11. Press F5 to run the project in debug mode. The HTML page loads in a browser instance and prompts for a user name. Enter a name to start a simple chat. Copy the URL from the address line of the browser and use it to open two more browser instances. In each browser instance, enter a unique user name. In each browser instance, add a comment and click Send. The comments should display in all browser instances.

  12. If you are interested in how the sample works, you can refer to Tutorial: Getting Started with SignalR 2 for a detailed code walk through.

In this sample you have learned the basics of SignalR and how to use it to build a chat room application. In other samples you'll learn how to use Azure SignalR service and host your chat room on Azure.