Computer Networking

Client-Server Chat Application

This is a *nix implementation of Computer Networking Chat App Project

xcode-select --install

Rubric code

libsocket/*.(cpp|h) Shared socket logic between client and server
Client.h/cpp Client socket logic
Server.h/cpp Server socket logic
Logger.h/cpp Logging messages to file

All other sources tie the project together but don't necessarily deal with sockets.

Phase 1 Complete

All TCP aspects have been completed. App now uses hooks architecture. Any time an error event occurs it runs the associated event handler stored in *Socket::*_handlers. All possible errors are in libsocket/Errors.h. Client and server processes now gracefully disconnect. The need for tmux to kill the windows is no longer necessary because deadlocks have been fixed using ShutdownTasks hooks, but it's still helpful for development.

Dependencies

This project requires the following dependencies for successful build:

Homebrew (/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)") or equivalent package manager for *nix system
CMake (brew install cmake or sudo apt install cmake or equivalent)
Xcode command line tools (Mac) or build-essentials package (Ubuntu) or equivalent
ninja build tool

Optionally, ~~but highly recommended,~~ tmux.

Build

Convenient method

From the same directory as this README, execute:

./build-and-start.sh # [build folder] [session name] <- optionals

This will build the project using CMake and fire up a tmux session with 1 server (port 33420) and 2 client panes automatically. It also enables mouse control for tmux to make it even easier 😁 also by running this script, if you detach CTRL+b d from the session it will automatically kill the session for you.

If tmux is not installed it will skip that part entirely.

From Scratch

From the same directory as this README perform the following steps:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM=ninja -G Ninja -S $PWD/..
cmake --build ./ --target all -j 4 # or however many number of CPU cores you want to use

IMPORTANT NOTE

Because this program disables echo and canonical input on stdin, using CTRL+C does not work, so running these in their own tmux session is highly recommended so you can CTRL+b x y to terminate the program in case a deadlock occurs. Or if running from the convenient build script just detaching will kill the processes.

Special Considerations

In pch.h there is using SocketSizeType = char;. What's special about this is if you change it to another integer type it will automatically alter the TCP send and receive methods in the client and the server. Currently, the max message size is 255 because it's a char, but setting it to short will raise the max message size to 65535 and the partial message loop will read two bytes instead of just one 🤓.

robertmsale/ClientServerChatApp