Real Time Chat Application

This is a real-time chat application built using the Django(DRF) (HTML, CSS, React, Django Rest framework) stack. The app uses WebSockets for real-time communication between clients and the server.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• Running the Application
• Technologies Used
• Screenshots
• Contributing
• License

Features

• User authentication with JSON Web Tokens
• Real-time chat with WebSockets
• Create new chat rooms for Private message and Group message
• Send and receive messages in real time
• View the list of all users
• View the history of previous messages
• send files in chatroom
• user online or offline or typing message other user can see.
• user profile management.

Prerequisites

Backend

- Python == 3.11.7
- Django == 4.0
- Redis server or you can use direct in-memory database ( comment redis server and uncomment memory database from  settings.py

Frontend

- node == 20.9.0
- npm == 10.1.0
- React

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/krishna2808/chat-app.git
   cd chat-app

Frontend Installation

2. Install the dependencies for both the frontend and backend:

   cd frontend && npm install
   npm start

Backend Installation

3. Install the dependencies for the backend:

   python3 -m venv venv 
   source venv/bin/activate #Linux (activated venv)
   cd backend 
   pip install -r requirements.txt
   python manage.py makemigrations 
   python manage.py migrate # note if it will not proper migration then makemigrations and migrate with manually app
   sudo apt-get install redis-server  # note if you don't want to use redis then in-memory database for development environment. 
   sudo systemctl restart redis-server 

Running the Application

1. Start the backend server:

   cd backend
   python manage.py runserver

2. In a separate terminal, start the frontend application:

   cd frontend
   npm start

3. Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 to see the application in action.

Technologies Used

• Sqlite: Database for storing data
• Django Rest Framework: Drf framework for building REST APIs
• React: Library for building user interfaces
• WebSockets channel: Real-time communication between client and server
• JWT: Authentication using JSON Web Tokens
• Redis server: Redis server for Websocket.

Screenshots

Watch Video

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.