The Chat Room Application is a simple multi-client chatroom built entirely in C++. It allows multiple users to communicate in real-time within a local network or remotely via cloud hosting. This project utilizes C++'s built-in socket libraries for networking and multithreading for handling multiple client connections simultaneously.
- Multiple Clients: Supports multiple users chatting concurrently.
- Public and Private Room Mechanism: Users can join public rooms freely or create their own public or private chat rooms.
- Room Selection and Creation: Users can select from available public rooms or create a new room. Private rooms require a unique private key for access, which must be shared by the room creator.
- Message Broadcasting: Messages from one client are sent to all other connected clients within the same room.
- Threaded Client Handling: Each client is managed in its own thread for smooth communication.
- Client Disconnection Handling: Removes disconnected clients and continues broadcasting messages for active users.
- C++ Standard Library Sockets (
<sys/socket.h>,<netinet/in.h>, etc.) - Multithreading with the C++ Standard Library's
thread
The following diagram shows the architecture of the Chat Room Application, illustrating the flow of creating and joining public and private rooms:
The server listens for incoming client connections on a specified port (e.g., 8080). When a client connects, the server starts a new thread to handle communication with that client. Messages received from any client are broadcast to all other connected clients.
Each client connects to the server using a socket. Once connected, clients can send and receive messages. Clients can exit the chat by typing quit, which closes their connection to the server.
- A Linux-based system (can be adapted for Windows with minor changes)
- C++ compiler (e.g.,
g++) - Basic understanding of networking (TCP/IP)
git clone https://github.com/your-username/chat-room-application.git
cd chat-room-applicationg++ server.cpp -o server -lpthread
g++ client.cpp -o client./server./client- Clients may experience slight delays in message broadcasting with a large number of users.
- Server performance can be affected by very high traffic.
Contributions are welcome! Feel free to fork the repository, make changes, and submit pull requests.
This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.