Realtime Messaging

Skinbase Nova messaging now uses Laravel Reverb, Laravel Broadcasting, Laravel Echo, and Redis-backed queues.

Local setup

Set the Reverb and Redis values in .env.
Run php artisan migrate.
Run npm install if dependencies are not installed.
Start the websocket server with php artisan reverb:start --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8080.
Start queue workers with php artisan queue:work redis --queue=broadcasts,default,notifications --tries=1.
Start the frontend with npm run dev or build assets with npm run build.

Use BROADCAST_CONNECTION=reverb and QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis.
Keep MESSAGING_REALTIME=true only when Reverb is configured and reachable from the browser.
Terminate TLS in Nginx and proxy websocket traffic to the Reverb process.
Run both php artisan reverb:start and php artisan queue:work redis --queue=broadcasts,default,notifications --tries=1 under Supervisor or systemd.
The chat UI falls back to HTTP polling only when realtime is disabled in config.

The conversation view loads once via HTTP.
Live message, read, and typing updates arrive over websocket channels.
When the socket reconnects, the client requests message deltas with after_id to merge missed messages idempotently.