Distributed Shared Whiteboards

Overview

Shared Whiteboards is a distributed application designed to allow users to collaborate on shared whiteboards. The main features we developed are:

• Whiteboard Management: Allows users to create, edit, and delete whiteboards.
• Real-Time Collaboration: Enables multiple users to draw, erase, and view updates on whiteboards in real time.
• Action Broadcasting: Uses Erlang processes to broadcast actions like adding or removing strokes across nodes, ensuring data consistency.
• Undo/Redo Actions: Supports undoing and redoing actions on the whiteboard via a managed stack structure.
• WebSocket Communication: Facilitates real-time communication between the client and server using WebSockets.
• Load Balancing: Implements custom load balancing strategies with NGINX.

Application Components

• NGINX: Employed as a proxy server to ensure proper load balancing.
• Erlang: Erlang servers manage whiteboard activities through WebSocket communication. These servers handle everything from user authentication using JWTs for secure sessions to the real-time updating of whiteboard content.
• Glassfish: Serves as the Jakarta EE Application Server.
• MySQL: Utilized for storing persistent data such as user credentials and whiteboard metadata.
• Mnesia Database: Integrated within Erlang nodes to store whiteboard-specific data like access permissions, user connections, and action logs.

Short demo

distributed_shared_whiteboard_demo.mp4

Installing, configuring and running

You can refer to this README file for all the necessary instructions.

Contributors

• Marco Imbelli Cai
• Niccolò Mulè
• Nicolò Picchi