Sylk

Sylk WebRTC Client, focused on multiparty conferencing, is the companion client for SylkServer.

Sylk is built using HTML and JavaScript and uses the SylkRTC API to talk to SylkServer. It can be served as a web page using the web server of your choice, or it can be packaged as a stand alone desktop application using Electron. This repository contains the code to build the website and a companion Electron app.

Features

• Multimedia calling with SIP interoperability
• Screen sharing for both one-to-one or multi-party
• Multi-party conferencing (WebRTC only)
• File sharing in WebRTC conferences
• End-to-end encrypted chat sessions
• End-to-end encrypted file transfers
• Guest mode (no account required when invited)

Customization

Sylk WebRTC Client is preconfigured to use with the free service SIP2SIP.

The default settings of the app are found in src/app/config.js.

If you wish to use the client together with another instance of SylkServer, you must edit src/app/config.js.

The keys in config.js have the following functions:

• publicUrl - the Web URL where Sylk clients or Web browsers connect to SylkServer
• enrollmentUrl - a Web URL where accounts can be created by the Sylk client. The account creation is realized by a POST request containing the following data: username, email, password, display_name. For a complete server-side example of handling such request see createAccount function
• serverCallHistoryUrl - a Web URL from where the last calls can be retrieved from by Sylk clients For a complete server-side example of handling such request see sipSettings page
• defaultConferenceDomain - all configured Sylk clients must share the same domain
• downloadUrl - a Web URL where Sylk client can be downloaded from, shown when the web page is used to access SylkServer

Development

Node.js is needed for development. Version >= 16.1.0 is required. For convenience the configure script and Makefile are provided.

Node.js can be downloaded from https://nodejs.org

yarn must be used to install dependencies, it can be installed as follows:

npm install -g yarn

NOTE: depending on your Node installation you might need to use sudo.

• Install all dependencies

    ./configure

For Windows build:

    brew cask install xquartz
    brew install wine

Website

• Build the ready to be deployed distribution (available in dist/)

    make

• Development build, starts a test webserver which auto-reloads as the code changes

    make watch

• Deploy the built website to the default server (SIP2SIP.info)

    make deploy

• Deploy the built website to the default staging server (SIP2SIP.info)

    make deploy-test

To deploy the built website to your own web server, copy the contents of the dist/ folder to the location on de website where you want it to be available. See examples/apache/.htaccess for required rewrite rules.

Electron application

The version number can be set in app/package.json

• Build the Electron application

    make electron

• Build and run Electron application:

    make app-run

• Build macOS DMG package. To publish a DMG outside the app store the applications needs to be notarized. If you have a .env file containing your appleid and password, it will attempt to notarize the app. You should generate an app-specific password for this. The file should look like:

APPLE_ID=YOUR_APPLE_ID
APPLE_ID_PASSWORD=YOUR_CUSTOM_PASSOWRD_FOR_THE_APP

    make pkg-osx

• Build Windows NSIS based installer (universal: 32 and 64 bits)

    make pkg-win

NOTE: If building on macOS Wine must be installed with brew install wine.

• Build Linux AppImage (both 32 and 64 bit builds)

    make pkg-linux

NOTE: Requires a GNU/Linux system with the following packages installed: icnsutils, graphicsmagick

Common

• Clean the distribution

    make clean

• Clean all installed packages and generated files

    make distclean

Debugging

By default Sylk doesn't output a lot of information to the browser's JavaScript console. Console debug messages are namespaced by library, the two most important ones being 'sylkrtc' and 'blinkrtc'. In order to enable debugging for both open the browser's JavaScript console and type the following:

    window.blinkDebugger.enable('sylkrtc*,blinkrtc*');

Then reload the page. Debug messages will be logged to the console now.

Electron app debug can be enabled from Debug/Open DevTools menu.

License

Sylk is available under the AGPLv3 license. See the LICENSE file.

Authors

• Tijmen de Mes (@tijmenNL)
• Saúl Ibarra Corretgé (@saghul)

Credits

The following organizations have helped the development of Sylk by providing funding:

• NLnet Foundation
• ISOC Nederland
• SIDNfonds