Add project README

Short overview of what Ping does, how the backend and frontend are put together, and how to bring the stack up locally.
2026-09-21 19:33:06 +02:00
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+# Ping
+
+A Discord style chat app. Servers with text and voice channels, direct messages, a friends system, presence, and voice/video calls, all wrapped in a small web client.
+
+## What it does
+
+- **Servers and channels**: create a server, add text or voice channels inside it, reorder them.
+- **Direct messages**: one on one chats outside of any server, created on demand when you message someone for the first time.
+- **Friends**: send requests, accept or reject them, remove a friend, block someone.
+- **Presence**: see who's online in real time across the app.
+- **Voice and video calls**: ring a friend or jump into a voice channel, with LiveKit handling the actual media.
+- **Attachments**: images, audio and plain files attached to messages, uploaded straight to storage.
+- **Realtime everything**: new messages, edits, deletes, friend updates and presence changes all arrive over a single SignalR connection, no polling.
+- Login through OIDC, sharing the same identity provider as Musify.
+
+## How it's built
+
+**Backend**: .NET 10, one API host on top of a Domain / Application / Infrastructure split.
+- Mediator handles CQRS style commands and queries, with `ErrorOr` for typed results instead of throwing on expected failures.
+- PostgreSQL through EF Core for everything: users, servers, channels, messages, friendships, attachments.
+- SignalR for chat, presence and call signaling (ringing, accepting, hanging up).
+- LiveKit's server SDK issues the access tokens clients use to join a voice/video room.
+- FluentValidation on the request DTOs, wired in through a minimal API filter.
+- Storage goes through an S3 compatible bucket, reusing the SeaweedFS instance from the Musify stack instead of running a second one.
+- Zitadel for OIDC/OAuth2 login, also shared with Musify so a single account works across both apps.
+
+**Frontend**: React 19 with TypeScript, built with Vite.
+- Zustand for the small bits of client state: current view, active call, toasts, presence.
+- `react-oidc-context` and `oidc-client-ts` handle the login flow and token refresh.
+- `@microsoft/signalr` for the hub connection, with a small `useHubEvent` hook to subscribe to server events from any component.
+- `@livekit/components-react` plus `livekit-client` for the actual call UI and media handling.
+- Plain CSS, no component library.
+
+**Infrastructure**: Docker Compose for local development. Postgres and LiveKit run in containers; Zitadel and the S3 storage are the ones already running for Musify, so this stack only adds what's specific to Ping.
+
+## Project layout
+
+```
+backend/    .NET solution: the API host plus the Domain, Application and Infrastructure projects
+frontend/   the React client
+backend/deploy/   Compose files and env templates for local development
+```
+
+## Running it locally
+
+The backend expects Musify's Zitadel and SeaweedFS containers to already be running, since it reuses them instead of standing up its own copy. With that in place:
+
+```bash
+cp backend/deploy/.env.example backend/deploy/.env
+# edit backend/deploy/.env to point at your Musify checkout and fill in the real S3 keys
+
+docker compose -f backend/deploy/compose.yml -f backend/deploy/compose.dev.yml up -d
+```
+
+That starts Postgres, LiveKit and the one-shot setup jobs (migrations, the Zitadel project for Ping, the storage bucket). From there, run the API and the frontend from your IDE or with `dotnet run` / `npm run dev` against them. See [backend/deploy/README.md](backend/deploy/README.md) for the full details, including how to also build and run the API and frontend inside Docker.