cchat

A set of stabilized interfaces for cchat implementations, joining the backend and frontend together.

Backend

Service

A service is a server with extra services implemented.

Interfaces

• Server
• ServerList
• ServerIcon (optional)
• Configurator (optional)
• Authenticator (optional)

Authenticator

The authenticator interface allows for a multistage initial authentication API that the backend could use. Multistage is done by calling AuthenticateForm then Authenticate again forever until no errors are returned.

for {
	// Pseudo-function to render the form and return the results of those forms
	// when the user confirms it.
	outputs := renderAuthForm(svc.AuthenticateForm())

	if err := svc.Authenticate(outputs); err != nil {
		renderError(errors.Wrap(err, "Error while authenticating"))
		continue // retry
	}

	break // success
}

Commander

The commander interface allows the backend to implement custom commands to easily extend the API.

Interfaces

• CommandCompleter (optional)

Identifier

The identifier interface forces whatever interface that embeds this one to be uniquely identifiable.

Configurator

The configurator interface is a way for the frontend to display configuration options that the backend has.

Server

A server is any entity that is usually a channel or a guild.

Interfaces

• ServerList and/or ServerMessage
• ServerIcon (optional)

ServerMessage

A server message is an entity that contains messages to be displayed. An example would be channels in Discord and IRC.

Interfaces

• ServerMessageSender (optional): adds message sending capability.
• ServerMessageSendCompleter (optional): adds message completion capability.

Messages

Interfaces

• MessageHeader: the minimum for a proper message.
• MessageCreate or MessageUpdate or MessageDelete
• MessageNonce (optional)
• MessageAuthorAvatar (optional)

Frontend

ServersContainer

A servers container is any type of view that displays the list of servers. It should implement a SetServers([]Server) that the backend could use to call anytime the server list changes (at all).

Typically, most frontend should implement this interface onto a tree node instead of a tree view, as servers can be infinitely nested.

This interface expects the frontend to handle its own errors.

MessagesContainer

A messages container is a view implementation that displays a list of messages live. This implements the 3 most common message events: CreateMessage, UpdateMessage and DeleteMessage. The frontend must handle all 3.

Since this container interface extends a single Server, the frontend is allowed to have multiple views. This is usually done with tabs or splits, but the backend should update them all nonetheless.

SendableMessage

The frontend can make its own send message data implementation to indicate extra capabilities that the backend may want.

An example of this is MessageNonce, which is similar to IRCv3's labeled response extension. The frontend could implement this interface and check if incoming MessageCreate events implement the same interface.