By Vishal Basumatary in javascript — Mar 24, 2023

OpenTok Create Session

If you are looking to add video communication functionality to your website or mobile app, OpenTok by Vonage is an excellent tool to consider. With OpenTok, you can quickly and easily create sessions that allow users to interact with each other in real-time using video and audio.

The first step to creating a session with OpenTok is generating a session ID. This ID is unique to every session and is used to identify the session when users connect to it.

Using the OpenTok Dashboard

The easiest way to generate a session ID is by using the OpenTok dashboard. To do this, follow these steps:

Log in to your OpenTok account
Click on the 'Project' dropdown and select your project
Click on 'Create Session'
Choose a session type (Basic or Relay)
Choose a location (US or Europe)
Click 'Create'
Copy the Session ID

You can then use this session ID in your client-side code to connect users to the session.

Programmatically Generating a Session ID

If you prefer to generate your session ID programmatically, you can do so using one of the OpenTok SDKs. Here's an example of how to generate a session ID using the OpenTok PHP SDK:


require_once 'opentok-php-sdk-master/vendor/autoload.php';

use OpenTok\OpenTok;

$apiKey = 'your-api-key';
$apiSecret = 'your-api-secret';

$opentok = new OpenTok($apiKey, $apiSecret);

$sessionOptions = array(
    'archiveMode' => ArchiveMode::ALWAYS,
    'mediaMode' => MediaMode::ROUTED
);

$session = $opentok->createSession($sessionOptions);

$sessionId = $session->getSessionId();

The above code creates an OpenTok instance using your API key and secret, then generates a session ID using the createSession method. You can then use this session ID in your client-side code to connect users to the session.

Conclusion

OpenTok provides an easy and straightforward way to add video communication functionality to your website or mobile app. By generating a session ID, you can quickly create sessions that allow users to interact with each other in real-time using video and audio. Whether you choose to use the OpenTok dashboard or programmatically generate your session ID, OpenTok makes it easy to get started with video communication.