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How to Deploy Fishjam to Production

How-to Guide - Deploy your Fishjam backend safely to production

This guide covers the essential steps to move from development (using Room Manager) to a production-ready Fishjam backend deployment.

Prerequisites​

  • Working Fishjam backend (see Backend Quick Start)
  • Production Fishjam environment (not Sandbox)
  • Domain and SSL certificates for your backend
  • Production database and infrastructure

Step 1: Set up production Fishjam environment​

Get production credentials​

  1. Log in to Fishjam Dashboard
  2. Create or select your Production environment (not Sandbox)
  3. Copy your production Fishjam URL and Management Token
  4. Note: These are different from your sandbox credentials

Environment variables setup​

Create production environment variables:

# Production Fishjam credentials
FISHJAM_URL="your-production-fishjam-url"
FISHJAM_MANAGEMENT_TOKEN="your-production-management-token"

# Your application settings
NODE_ENV="production"
PORT="3000"
DATABASE_URL="your-production-database-url"

# Security settings
JWT_SECRET="your-secure-jwt-secret"
CORS_ORIGIN="https://yourdomain.com"

Step 2: Implement proper authentication​

Replace Room Manager calls​

Remove any Room Manager dependencies from your client code:

// ❌ Remove: Room Manager calls
const response = await fetch(
  `https://fishjam.io/api/v1/connect/${ROOM_MANAGER_ID}/room-manager?...`,
);

// ✅ Replace with: Your authenticated API
const response = await fetch("/api/join-room", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    Authorization: `Bearer ${userToken}`,
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ roomName }),
});

Implement user authentication​

const fishjamClient = new FishjamClient({
  fishjamUrl: process.env.FISHJAM_URL!,
  managementToken: process.env.FISHJAM_MANAGEMENT_TOKEN!,
});

// Authentication middleware
const authenticateUser = async (
  req: express.Request,
  res: express.Response,
  next: express.NextFunction,
) => {
  try {
    const token = req.headers.authorization?.replace("Bearer ", "");
    if (!token) {
      return res.status(401).json({ error: "Authentication required" });
    }

    const decoded = jwt.verify(token, process.env.JWT_SECRET);
    req.user = await getUserById(decoded.userId);
    next();
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(401).json({ error: "Invalid token" });
  }
};

// Protected endpoint for joining rooms
app.post("/api/join-room", authenticateUser, async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const { roomName } = req.body;
    const user = req.user;

    // Create or get room
    const room = await getOrCreateRoom(roomName);

    // Verify user has permission to join this room
    if (!canUserJoinRoom(user, room)) {
      return res.status(403).json({ error: "Access denied" });
    }

    // Create peer with user metadata
    const { peer, peerToken } = await fishjamClient.createPeer(room.id, {
      metadata: {
        userId: user.id,
        name: user.name,
        avatar: user.avatar,
        role: user.role,
      },
    });

    res.json({
      peerToken,
      fishjamUrl: process.env.FISHJAM_URL,
    });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error("Join room error:", error);
    res.status(500).json({ error: "Failed to join room" });
  }
});

(Optional) Step 3: Handle webhooks and events​

You may wish to receive events from Fishjam regarding created rooms and peers. All you need for this is a single api endpoint:

Webhook endpoint​

// Webhook signature verification
const verifyWebhookSignature = (
  req: express.Request,
  res: express.Response,
  next: express.NextFunction,
) => {
  const signature = req.headers["x-fishjam-signature"];
  const payload = JSON.stringify(req.body);

  const expectedSignature = crypto
    .createHmac("sha256", process.env.WEBHOOK_SECRET)
    .update(payload, "utf8")
    .digest("hex");

  if (signature !== expectedSignature) {
    return res.status(401).json({ error: "Invalid signature" });
  }

  next();
};

// Webhook handler
app.post(
  "/api/webhooks/fishjam",
  express.raw({ type: "application/json" }),
  verifyWebhookSignature,
  (req: express.Request, res: express.Response) => {
    const event = req.body;

    switch (event.type) {
      case "peer_connected":
        handlePeerConnected(event.data);
        break;
      case "peer_disconnected":
        handlePeerDisconnected(event.data);
        break;
      case "room_empty":
        handleRoomEmpty(event.data);
        break;
      default:
        console.log("Unhandled event type:", event.type);
    }

    res.status(200).json({ received: true });
  },
);

Enabling webhooks​

Now, with your endpoint setup, all you need to do is supply your webhook endpoint to Fishjam when creating a room:

const createRoomWithWebhooks = async (
  roomName: string,
  roomType = "conference",
) => {
  const room = await fishjamClient.createRoom({
    roomType,
    webhookUrl: `${process.env.BASE_URL}/api/webhooks/fishjam`,
  });

  return room;
};

Common production issues​

Issue: Token expiration handling​

Peer tokens expire 24h after creation. We encourage keeping room and peer lifetimes as short as possible (typically a single room corresponds to a single video call or stream). However, if you wish to reuse a single peer over multiple days, you can make use of token refreshing:

const newToken = fishjamClient.refreshPeerToken(roomId, peerId);

See also​

For scaling considerations:

For specific backend frameworks: