Real-time Chat App with SignalR

Project roadmap

1. 01

   Set up the SignalR hub and basic messaging

   ~2h

   Create a ChatHub with a SendMessage method that broadcasts to all connected clients in a room group.

2. 02

   Implement room-based groups

   ~1.5h

   Use SignalR groups so messages are scoped to the chat room a user has joined.

3. 03

   Add presence tracking

   ~2h

   Track connected users per room in a concurrent dictionary and broadcast join/leave notifications.

4. 04

   Add typing indicators

   ~1.5h

   Implement a lightweight event that broadcasts 'user is typing' state with debouncing on the client.

5. 05

   Persist message history with EF Core

   ~2.5h

   Store sent messages in a database and load recent history when a user joins a room.

6. 06

   Handle reconnection and scaling considerations

   ~2h

   Handle client reconnect scenarios gracefully and document how a backplane like Redis would be added for multi-server scaling.

Resources

• DocsC# Documentation