HipSupport

HipSupport is a Laravel 4.2 package that facilitates the creation of a live chat support system ontop of HipChat's API. If you are already using Laravel 4.2 and HipChat, then you can have a fully functional live chat system up and running in minutes. Try a live demo!

• How it Works
• Installation
• Configuration
• Artisan Commands
• Quickstart
• Named Users
• Limitations

How it Works

HipChat released a jQuery HipChat Plugin that allows users to embed a HipChat Web Client into their web pages so that users can now access public chat rooms anonymously. HipSupport uses HipChat's API to dynamically create a new public chat room for each incoming chat request and send a notification to your company's users of this new chat session. From there, your company's users can join the room and chat with the user.

Installation

Install this package through Composer by editing your project's composer.json file to require estey/hipsupport.

{
    "require": {
        "laravel/framework": "4.2.*",
        "estey/hipsupport": "1.0.*"
    }
}

Then, update Composer:

composer update

Open app/config/app.php, and add the service provider to the providers array:

'Estey\HipSupport\HipSupportServiceProvider'

Add the facade to the aliases array at the bottom of app/config/app.php.

'HipSupport' => 'Estey\HipSupport\HipSupportFacade'

Configuration

To publish the configuration file, run:

php artisan config:publish estey/hipsupport

The config file will be located at app/config/packages/estey/hipsupport/config.php. An Admin token is required in the token field and a user with access to add rooms is required in the owner_user_id field.

The room_name format should be something unique and by default appends Y-m-d H:m to the end of the Room name.

[
    'room_name' => 'Live Chat ' . date('Y-m-d H:m')
]

Or you can leave this blank and assign it at runtime with whatever you want. Like the user's IP Address or whatever. If a room name already exists then a number will be appended to the end of the name. (This comes at the cost of an extra API request, so be mindful of that. See the Limitations section for more details.)

To send notifications, you must define the room_id in the notification array. If the room_id is null then no notification will be sent.

Artisan Commands

There are two Artisan commands to help you get started. php artisan hipsupport:online and php artisan hipsupport:offline. These two commands take your live chat online and.. offline. Online accepts a parameter to define how many minutes to bring HipSupport online.

php artisan hipsupport:online 480

The above command will bring HipSupport online for 8 hours. That way you don't have to remember to turn it off. Check if HipSupport is online using the HipSupport::isOnline() method.

Quickstart

To create an absolute basic installation, create a route to handle your incoming chat requests. If HipSupport is Offline then HipSupport::init() will return false.

Route::post('chat', ['before' => 'csrf', function() {
    $room = HipSupport::init();
    if ($room) {
        return Redirect::to($room->hipsupport_url);
    }
}]);

In your view, add a form to post into your chat route when HipSupport is online.

@if (HipSupport::isOnline())
  {{ Form::open(array('url' => 'chat')) }}
    {{ Form::submit('Start Live Chat') }}
  {{ Form::close() }}
@endif

By using JavaScript, you can open the chat up on an iFrame, in an iFrame inside a modal, or open the chat in a new window. The chat screen is simple and automatically resizes to the size of its container. To handle an ajax request, your route would look something like this:

Route::post('chat', ['before' => 'csrf', function() {
    $room = HipSupport::init();

    if ($room) {
        if (Request::ajax()) {
            return Response::json(['url' => $room->hipsupport_url]);
        }
        return Redirect::to($room->hipsupport_url);
    }
}]);

Named Users

HipChat's API doesn't currently provide a way to name Guests. If you pass HipSupport::init(array('anonymous' => false)) then HipChat will prompt the user to enter there name, but the page is kind of clunky, isn't responsive and kills the illusion of a live chat system. Alternatively, you can add a form and a layer of validation in front of the HipSupport::init() method and pass the user's inputs into the room_name and notification message. You can even save the user's data (User ID, Name, Email, etc) in your database associated to the chat's room_id so that you can attribute the chat history to specific users.

Here's an example of an extremely basic validation.

Route::post('chat', ['before' => 'csrf', function() {
    $validator = Validator::make(Input::all(), ['name' => 'required|min:5']);

    if ($validator->fails()) {
        // Redirect with Errors or send Errors via JSON Response... 
    }   

    $room = HipSupport::init([
        'room_name' => 'Live Chat with ' . Input::get('name'),
        'notification' => [
            'message' => Input::get('name') . ' would like to chat.'
        ]
    ]);

    // Save the name and $room->room_id into the database.
    if ($room) {
        if (Request::ajax()) {
            return Response::json(['url' => $room->hipsupport_url]);
        }
        return Redirect::to($room->hipsupport_url);
    }
}]);

Limitations

HipChat's API currently limits API requests to 100 requests per 5 minutes. Each HipSupport::init() call eats 3 requests (check if room name exists, create room and notify room). Read more on HipChat's rate limiting.

Too Many Rooms!

It's probably a good idea to adopt some form of consistant naming of dynamically created rooms. In the next version of HipSupport I plan on added some more Artisan commands to help mass delete or mass archive rooms that have been inactive for a specified amount of time and whose room name contains a given string.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.