💬Conversations

This feature deals on real-time communication, which is an essential feature of many health-tech software applications, as it allows healthcare professionals to communicate with their patients in real-time. In this API, communication takes the form of chats. With this feature, if a patient is experiencing a health emergency, a healthcare provider can use real-time communication to provide guidance and support.

On how this feature works, a conversation room is created between a patient and the medical provider assigned to them once done by a consultant. A conversation room is also created between the patient and the consultant. This helps in enabling one-on-one private conversations. Messages sent in the rooms are encrpyted and stored in the MongoDB database for privacy and protection against identity theft.

This feature was built with scalabilty in mind, where users can be connected to multiple websocket servers and at the same time communicate with each other in real-time. This was implemented with Socket.IO and Redis technologies.

Both parties involved in the conversation will have to be authenticated.

@WebSocketGateway({
  cors: {origin: '*'}
})
export class ConversationsGateway implements OnGatewayConnection {
  constructor(
    private messageService: MessageService,
    private conversationsService: ConversationsService,

  ) {}


  @WebSocketServer()
  server: Server;

  async handleConnection(socket: Socket){
    const conversationRoom = socket.handshake.query.room 
    const jwt = socket.handshake.headers.authorization.split(' ')[1]
    socket.join(conversationRoom)
    
    const socketPresenceValidity = await this.conversationsService.checkIfUserBelongsToConversationRoom(jwt, conversationRoom.toString())

    if(socketPresenceValidity === false) {
      socket.emit('error', "Unauthorized access: Authorization header token is expired, or client is not authorized to read room conversations.")
      socket.disconnect(true)
    }

    else {
      const messages = await this.messageService.loadConversationRoomMessages(conversationRoom.toString())
      socket.emit('message', messages)
      console.log(`Socket client ${socket.id} joined ${conversationRoom} room. Messages loaded`)
    }

  }

encrypted messages stored in MongoDB

decrypted messages on socket.io connection