Hi,

I have had a request to build a dating-type website, and one feature they want to implement is a Private Messaging facility.

I can see the new Members module would help with this, but is private messaging possible? Any clues on how to go about this?

Regards,

Mark

I haven't implemented anything like this yet in Couch, but I believe the way to go about this would be using both the Member's module, as well as the 'Relationships' feature, described here:

http://www.couchcms.com/docs/concepts/r ... ships.html

You will have 'members', and also 'messages'. Each member is going to be 'related to' several messages, and each 'message' is going to be connected to (at least) 2 members (depending on how your messaging is going to work).

Lastly, you will probably need to design your own interface for reading and sending messages - you may not even want your members to do that on the backend, preferring to build a frontend interface for the messaging functions, or building the messaging capabilities to already existing pages in your site. To do that, you'll need to use the "Databound Forms" features, described here:

http://www.couchcms.com/docs/concepts/d ... forms.html

So, in theory, you should be able to achieve what you're looking for, but as you can imagine, this is an advanced kind of setup, involving integrating many of the powerful features that Couch has to offer.

Don't let this scare you, though: it doesn't mean that it's going to be 'complicated', it just means that you'll have to be prepared to do a bit of reading, and spend some time trying out different things, before you find the solution that works for you. I would suggest you start with the basics of your site, and then move on to implementing each of these more advanced features as you need them, as slowly as possible - and not hesitating to come back here for help, when you come across a specific problem you can't solve!

Are you thinking to some "simple" messaging or to live chat facility? One issue with the online chat could be the fact that, as it is now, Couch can't be used to show online users. Or, if you want to chat with somebody, you should see if he/she is online or not. However, as KK said, the coming version of couch will allow to show online visitors too.

[trendoman]

@Simon,
what is your take on live public chat?

Suppose, you add an editable (kinda checkbox) for each user, which is updated once this user makes an action. If a user visits a certain chat page (or posts a message in simpler system), he is marked as "active/online". Upon certain time of inactivity this status is removed.

Statuses are refreshed every time chat page is loaded (can it be done in the background with ajax?), and this page reloading happens all the time, as data-bound-form receives a chat message from someone. Message is saved as a title of a clonable page (this might overload the system).

Really late reply.

I wanted to run a messaging system to users can message each other.
I'll have to look into the relationships document.

The idea is to have a page that holds all the messages like it does in this forums
Then you can open each message and read, reply.

I'll need to work on a notification so people know they've received a message