This project is a simple example of a disributed chat system. Here we explore to different alternatives of building such a system, i.e

• Using a custom wire protocl in C
• Design the same system, but use Python gRPC.

Follow these instructions to get set up the project. We assume you already have working C compiler set up and have working proficiency in C and Python.

1. Clone the repository to your local machine by running
   git clone https://github.com/hileamlakB/CConnect.git

2. Navigate to the project directory by running
   cd CConnect

3. Build the client files by running
   make or make client

4. Run the compiled binary by running
   ./client

You should now see a console window and can start chatting! For example commands and interaction flows, please refer to docs/Examples.md.

Note that while we provide code for the server, you (the user) do not need to build or setup the server. This is because we have set up a DigitalOcean Droplet running the server code. All you have to do is connect to that server. For more details about our server setup, please refer to docs/Engineering_Notebook.md.

For more information about the specification of the wire protocol, please refer to docs/Specification.md

The setup for the gRPC version follows largely from the gRPC tutorial in the documentation. First, install gRPC for Python by running

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install grpcio

Then, install the protoc compiler by running python -m pip install grpcio-tools.

Define the services in a .proto file, which we have done in grpc_chatroom/spec.proto.

Finally, generate the server and client code with protoc by running python -m grpc_tools.protoc -I . --python_out=. --pyi_out=. --grpc_python_out=. spec.proto.

To run the client, run the file client.py as you would any other Python file, and the command line based chatroom should launch.

Unit testing for the gRPC implementation can be found in grpc_chatroom/unit_test.py, where the core functionality of the chatroom are tested. To run the unit tests, run the file as you would any Python file, by simply running python unit_test.py. Ensure that the server is running in another terminal by running python server.py.

Unit testing for the C wire protocol version can be found in test_script.sh. This file passes input into the client via a pipe and checks if the response is as desired.

If you'd like to contribute to this project, please fork the repository and make a pull request.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.