Programming WebRTC

Build your own video chat application - but that's just the beginning. With WebRTC, you'll create real-time applications to stream any kind of user media and data directly from one browser to another, all built on familiar HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Power real-time activities like text-based chats, secure peer-to-peer file transfers, collaborative brainstorming sessions - even multiplayer gaming. And you're not limited to two connected users: an entire chapter of the book is devoted to engineering multipeer WebRTC apps that let groups of people communicate in real time. You'll create your own video conferencing app. It's all here.

You'll learn how to directly connect multiple browsers over the open internet using a signaling channel. You will gain familiarity with a whole set of Web APIs whose features bring WebRTC to life: requesting access to users' cameras and microphones; accessing and manipulating arbitrary user files, right in the browser; and web storage for persisting shared data over the life of a WebRTC call. Like any Web API, WebRTC doesn't enjoy a perfect implementation in any browser. But this book will guide you in writing elegant code to the specification, with backward-compatible fallback code for use in almost all modern browsers.

Use WebRTC to build the next generation of web applications that stream media and data in real time, directly from one user to another - all by working in the browser.

What You Need:

Readers need a text editor, an up-to-date copy of Chrome or Firefox, and a POSIX-style command-line shell. They'll also need to install a little bit of open-source software, especially Node.js. All necessary setup is covered in full in the book's introductory chapter.