TransferX

Inspiration

File transfer wirelessly has become unecessarily complex and takes a lot of time and effort to do. Perhaps both parties need to be connected to the same network and it takes time to set the connection. Both parties would also require to have a certain application installed. TransferX solves both of these problems by leveraging websocket technology to have 0-requirement realtime communication, all straight from your web-browser.

What it does

• Realtime file transfer to connected parties.
• Can be peer-to-peer if needed.
• Ultra-fast Speed, limited only by the websocket implementation of the browser.
• Fun toy, where files can be dragged and slammed into the other device similar to air hockey!

How we built it

• It uses socket.io under the hood which does websockets and if they are not available, long-polling is carried out.
• I use an express-node server that serves the static html files, used by the user to browse the directory and send files..
• jquery for misc operations
• interactjs for dragging and dropping files with style.

Challenges we ran into

• Getting the idea itself took half the time.
• No idea where to even being with.
• socket io was completely new.
• I was not so comfortable with js, python being my main language.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Atleast was able to complete a bare application, no frills in the frontend
• Glad to get the app working real-time with pretty decent speed

What we learned

• Do not do things solo, get a team.
• Time runs extremely fast in a hackathon.
  • focus more on frontend than the functionality from next time (There's no point in your app working, if there's nothing to show)

What's next for TransferX

• A LOT, video streams, games
• parallel scaling with clients
• BETTER FRONTEND (the current one is no frontend basically)
• more secure p2p and avoiding cross-talk

Built With

• javascript
• node.js
• socket.io