Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by boushley 903 days ago
Really? WebRTC DataChannels seem like they could fulfill your needs. What is it that prevents using something like WebRTC Data Channels and forces you to use TCP based connections?
2 comments

Agreed. I was using webrtc data channels for a messaging app and it’s great - the data sent could simply be multiplayer co-ord’s, actions etc instead.
Oh, you’re right!
So when I looked into it last month - its true DataChannels would be the answer. But I couldn't find any "nice" abstraction in the language i'm using for it. like I just can't get some standalone WebRTCDataChannels abstraction - many WebRTC libraries don't have implementation for this or its all very specialized for audio transfer. There is a route of using some standalone WebRTC gateway service that your application can send messages to (I think this is the purpose of Janus?) - blah blah point is: its not easily done. Not in Elixir so far anyways.

And the second part of it is - I'm sure its easily done but at this point there is some incentive to keep whatever implementation you have to yourself.

Or maybe I missed something and I should try looking into it again.

There is an Elixir version of WebRTC available. It is still early days, but your feedback/asks would be monumental in making it better!

https://github.com/elixir-webrtc

It is a minefield you’re right. I just implemented my own version of it with trial and error.