is it possible to have video chat capabilities using rails 5 action cable

Question

I was wondering is it possible to have a real time video chat just using rails 5 action cable. Can I use something like webRTC and combine it with the Rails action cable. Will it be possible to have p2p video streaming on action cable.

Answer 1

The Rails action cable is basically an open channel between your client code in the web browser and your server process, meaning you can have things happen quickly without the need to send a http request.

WebRTC is basically a peer-to-peer protocol. It needs some signalling activity to help it establish a call, but from then on, it os peer to peer, or browser to browser. The beauty of this arrangement is that the server does not have to carry the video stream, so the server can be lightweight.

So as you can see, webRTC and rails cable are different in nature, so while you could use the rails cable for the signalling part, you won't be able to use it for the video stream.