Webogram – UNOFFICIAL Telegram Web App
Telegram offers great apps for mobile communication. It is based on the MTProto protocol and has an Open API. I personally like Telegram for its speed and cloud-support (that makes a web app possible, unlike in the case of WA and others).
MTProto data can be carried over HTTP, but no official web-version for Telegram exists for the time being. So this project is my take at creating one.
Disclaimer:
This is an alpha version of the Telegram UNOFFICIAL web application. It may have undetected security issues, and there is definitely a load of bugs to fix, features to add and so on. So if you want 200% secure and fully functional communication, don’t use this yet! You can always find Telegram official mobile applications here: https://telegram.org
That said, I’m using this app myself and I’d like to share its sources, so anyone can contribute to the development. Any help is welcome!
Interface
Here are some screenshots of the interface:
Implemented functionality list
- Sign in by phone number + SMS code, or phone call
- View list of existings chats (up-posting) with infinite scrolling
- View messages history for each chat/group (bottom-posting) with infinite scrolling
- View brief profile info
- View/edit group info
- View/edit members list
- View media in messages: photo, video
- Download documents from messages
- Emoji display in all browsers (Chrome, non-OSX ones)
- Emoji keyboard
- Send plain-text messages to user or group
- Send files (photos or documents) via attach icon or drag’n’drop
- Desktop notifications
- Create new group
- Edit group participants
- Settings
- Edit profile/userpic
- Contacts
- Edit, delete, forward messsages
Unsupported at the moment
- Registration
- Contacts add/edit
- Secret chats
- Search messages
- a lot more…
Technical details
The app is based on AngularJS JavaScript framework, written in pure JavaScript (migration to CoffeeScript is planned for the future). jQuery is used for DOM manipulations, and Bootstrap is the CSS-framework.
Running locally
Running web-server
Project repository is based on angularjs-seed and includes a simple web-server, so it’s easy to launch the app locally on your desktop.
Install node.js and run node server.js. Open page http://localhost:8000/app/index.html in your browser.
Running as Chrome Packaged App
It is possible to run this application in Chrome browser as a packaged app. In order to do this, open this URL in Chrome: chrome://extensions/, then tick “Developer mode” and press “Load unpacked extension…”. Select the downloaded app folder and Webogram application should appear in the list.
Also it’s necessary to replace following line in index.html:
<html lang="en" ng-app="myApp"><!-- ng-csp=""-->
with:
<html lang="en" ng-app="myApp" ng-csp="">
You can also download this application from Chrome Web Store: chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/telegram-unofficial/clhhggbfdinjmjhajaheehoeibfljjno. This is more secure way to use app than plain HTTP in web, because sources are downloaded only once and via HTTPS.
Third party libraries
Besides frameworks mentioned above, other libraries are used for protocol and UI needs. Here is the short list:
Many thanks to all these libraries’ authors and contributors. Detailed list with descriptions and licenses is available here.
Licensing
The source code is licensed under GPL v3. License is available here.
Contribute
You can help this project by reporting problems, suggestions, or contributing to the code.
Report a problem or suggestion
Go to our issue tracker and check if your problem/suggestion is already reported. If not, create a new issue with a descriptive title and detail your suggestion or steps to reproduce the problem.
Contribute to the code
If you know how to code, we welcome you to send fixes and new features, but in order to be efficient we ask you to follow the following procedure:
- Fork this repo using the button at the top.
- Clone your forked repo locally.
$ git clone git@github.com:yourname/webogram.git
- Don’t modify or work on the master branch, we’ll use it to always be in sync with webogram upstream.
$ git remote add upstream git@github.com:zhukov/webogram.git
$ git fetch upstream
- Always create a new issue when you plan to work on a bug or new feature and wait for other devs input before start coding.
- Once the new feature is approved or the problem confirmed, go to your local copy and create a new branch to work on it. Use a descriptive name for it, include the issue number for reference.
$ git checkout -b improve-contacts-99
- Do your coding and push it to your fork. Include as few commits as possible (one should be enough) and a good description. Always include a reference to the issue with “Fix #number”.
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Improved contact list. Fix #99"
$ git push origin improve-contacts-99
- Do a new pull request from your “improve-contacts-99” branch to webogram “master”.
How do changes suggested on a pull request
Some times when you do a PR, you will be asked to correct some code. You can do it on your work branch and commit normally, PR will be automatically updated.
$ git commit -am "Ops, fixing typo"
Once everything is OK, you will be asked to merge all commit messages into one to keep history clean.
$ git rebase -i master
Edit the file and mark as fixup (f) all commits you want to merge with the first one:
pick 1c85e07 Improved contact list. Fix #99
f c595f79 Ops, fixing typo
Once rebased you can force a push to your fork branch and the PR will be automatically updated.
$ git push origin improve-contacts-99 --force
How to keep your local branches updated
To keep your local master branch updated with upstream master, regularly do:
$ git fetch upstream
$ git checkout master
$ git pull --rebase upstream master
To update the branch you are coding in:
$ git checkout improve-contacts-99
$ git rebase master