openvidu-custom-panels 🔗

Check it on GitHub

The openvidu-custom-panels tutorial demonstrates how to replace the default panels with our own custom ones.

This customization is possible thanks to the PanelDirective, which provides us a simple way to customize the PanelComponent.

Running this tutorial 🔗

To run the tutorial you need the three components stated in OpenVidu application architecture: an OpenVidu deployment, your server application and your client application. In this order:

1. Run OpenVidu deployment 🔗

Using Docker Engine:

# WARNING: this container is not suitable for production deployments of OpenVidu
# Visit https://docs.openvidu.io/en/stable/deployment

docker run -p 4443:4443 --rm -e OPENVIDU_SECRET=MY_SECRET openvidu/openvidu-dev:2.26.0

2. Run your preferred server application sample 🔗

For more information visit Application server.

3. Run the client application tutorial 🔗

You need NPM and Angular CLI to serve the application. Check them with the following command:

npm -v
ng v

To serve the tutorial:

# Using the same repository openvidu-tutorials from step 2

cd openvidu-tutorials/openvidu-components/openvidu-custom-panels
npm install
ng serve

Go to http://localhost:4200 to test the app once the server is running.

To test the application with other devices in your network, visit this FAQ

Understanding the code 🔗

This is an Angular project generated with Angular CLI tool, and therefore you will see lots of configuration files and other stuff that doesn't really matter to us. We will focus on the following files under src/app/ folder:

  • app.module.ts: defines the AppComponent module where we import and configure the openvidu-angular library.
  • app.component.ts: defines AppComponent, main component of the app. It handles the request of OpenVidu tokens to pass them to the videoconference component, so it is able to connect to the OpenVidu session.

Configure openvidu-angular 🔗

First, we need to install the openvidu-angular library. You can check how to do that here.

The VideoconferenceComponent needs the OpenVidu tokens to connect to the session. We request them on ngOnInit method. The VideoconferenceComponent will automatically use them to connect to the session when available.

<ov-videoconference [tokens]="tokens">
  <ov-panel *ovPanel>
    <div *ovChatPanel id="my-chat-panel">This is my custom chat panel</div>
    <div *ovParticipantsPanel id="my-participants-panel">
      This is my custom participants panel
    </div>
  </ov-panel>
</ov-videoconference>

Inside of the ov-videoconference component we add the custom template tagged with the *ovPanel directive. You can see how the PanelDirective works here.

In this case, we customize the chat panel and the participants panel with our own by using directives *ovChatPanel and *ovParticipantsPanel in two different div elements. Note the hierarchy of the HTML elements: the ov-videoconference element contains the ov-panel element, which in turn contains the div elements tagged with the chat and participants panel directives.

app.component.ts declares the following properties and methods:

APPLICATION_SERVER_URL = 'http://localhost:5000/';

sessionId = "panel-directive-example";
tokens!: TokenModel;

constructor(private httpClient: HttpClient) { }

async ngOnInit() {
  this.tokens = {
    webcam: await this.getToken(),
    screen: await this.getToken(),
  };
}

getToken() {
  // Requesting tokens to the server application
}

Where:

  • APPLICATION_SERVER_URL: URL to communicate the client application with the server application to request OpenVidu tokens.
  • sessionId: OpenVidu Session identifier. This is the session where the VideoconferenceComponent will connect to.
  • tokens: object where OpenVidu Tokens are stored. The VideoconferenceComponent uses this object to connect to the session.
  • constructor method with dependency injection.
  • ngOnInit method where OpenVidu Tokens are requested.

Deploying openvidu-custom-panels 🔗

1) Build the docker image 🔗

Under the root project folder, you can see the openvidu-components/docker/ directory. Here it is included all the required files yo make it possible the deployment with OpenVidu.

First of all, you will need to create the openvidu-custom-panels docker image. Under openvidu-components/docker/ directory you will find the create_image.sh script. This script will create the docker image with the openvidu-basic-node as application server and the static files.

./create_image.sh openvidu/openvidu-custom-panels-demo:X.Y.Z openvidu-custom-panels

The script needs two parameters:

  1. The name of the docker image to create.
  2. The name of the tutorial folder.

This script will create an image named openvidu/openvidu-custom-panels-demo:X.Y.Z. This name will be used in the next step.

2) Deploy the docker image 🔗

Time to deploy the docker image. You can follow the Deploy OpenVidu based application with Docker guide for doing this.