Messaging Application

This is a simple messaging application, based on client-server architecture. Multiple clients send and receive messages via a single server using sockets.

Installation

To install locally, do the following:

1. Ensure that the following things have been installed:

   a. python (Installed based on your distro)

   b. pip (curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py && python get-pip.py)

   c. virtualenv

2. Open up a terminal.

3. Create a directory somewhere mkdir messaging-app-env and cd into it.

4. Create a python virtual environment python -m virtualenv .

5. Activate the virtual environment source bin/activate

6. Navigate to the project's root directory where setup.py file is located.

7. Do a pip install .

How to run the Server?:

Once the installation is complete, you can run the server by running the command: server . The server would start listening for clients at port 8000. You can change the port by adding the flag --port to the command. Eg. server --port 8888

For more information, run server --help

How to run a Client?:

Once the server is up, you may run a client using the following command:

$ client --name client1 --port 8001 --server-ip 127.0.0.1 --server-port 8000
2022-02-20 10:36:07,305 — client1 is now connected to the server
Enter 1 to send message
Enter 2 to view who's online/offline
Enter 3 to exit

Similarly, using the above command, you can run more clients with different names and ports.

Follow the instructions to send messages or see who's online.

For more information, run client --help

Docker

Build the Dockerfile using the following commands:

docker build --file docker/Dockerfile -t messaging-app .

To run a server using docker, run the following command:

docker run --rm -it -e PORT=8000 messaging-app

To run a client using docker, run the following command:

docker run --rm -it -e NAME=client1 -e PORT=8001 -e SERVER_IP=<ip-of-server-container> -e SERVER_PORT=8000 messaging-app client