Adding a group chat to Drupal

I was recently asked to add a chat module to the community section of the website of a major disease research foundation. I had built the site as a subcontractor for one of my main clients.

We started looking at Drupal native chat modules, and followed this routine:

1. Try the demo site.
2. Try it on our own demo site.
3. Watch it fail on our dev site.

We tried Chatroom, which had performance problems for some users in our test group. Additionally, the module's demo was for D5, but the D6 version of the module lacked many features that existed in the demo.

Then we tried phpfreechat, which integrates the open source chat app phpfreechat (pfc). Pfc itself is a pretty robust php/ajax chat system, but because it runs on the Prototype javascript library, it's not compatible with Jquery, which Drupal runs. I tried getting around this in a variety of hair-pulling ways, like bootstrapping drupal from within phpfreechat (the php app), and loading PFC through its drupal module but in an unthemed page. Neither worked well enough. We had duplicate posts, and the sessions weren't quite working to log the user in automatically.

Number three on the list was www.123flashchat.com. It's a flash client for a java server. There is a drupal integration module, but it's not in drupal cvs, so you're on your own maintaining it. And you will need to maintain it. It works, but the block needs work, and you may want to add additional configuration parameters for the flash client.

The module offers only one menu path, example.com/chat. Ideally, you'd be able to implement chats per node type or node with individually set chat parameters.

But, the chat itself is highly configurable. The java server makes it fast. You won't be able to theme it like you would with a php chat app, but you can get close enough.

If you try it, note that you probably can't run it on shared hosting, and the java server they provide may not work on all linux flavors out of the box.

There is a review of most drupal chat options here, but it leaves out 123flashchat, and another java option Realchat, which doesn't yet have a drupal integration.

So for now where sticking with 123flashchat.