LiChat: A Light-Weight Web Chatroom Service in C++

1. Core Features

LiChat is a light-weight chat room service. It provides many features:

Super-light: It is UDP and message based, very easy to deploy.
Privacy: It doesn't store any message at the backend/server side.
Freedom: It is free software, and it supports free speech; no censorship.
Functional:
- manages multiple clients
- allows multiple users
- processes UTF-8 text messages
- supports public chats, tagging users, and private messages. (WIP)
Secure: message encryption

That's it, as simple and light as possible.

This is free software, every design is transparent and ready for being reviewed or challanged. Please check the file for all the technical details.

The code works on GNU/Linux (maybe other Unix-like platforms), not on Microsoft Windows.

But the client (WIP) would work on different platforms.

Fork this repository or clone directly
Change directory to your local cloned dir
You will need a C++ compiler (e.g. Clang++ or g++).
Dependencies: sodium for security. The client code depends on ncursesw for TUI, POSIX Thread for threading, and ICU for UnicodeString processing.
Build command:
- g++ server.cpp -lsodium -o server
- g++ client.cpp -lsodium -lncursesw -licuuc -lpthread -o client
Run the build: ./server. The port number would be displayed in your STDOUT
Run the build: ./client. It would connect to localhost by default but you can also specify a domain name and a port.

Once service started, it would start receiving and processing UDP messages.
Use the client to securely signup, signin, and chat.
- To send a message, you need to press SHIFT + END key.
- To signout a client, you need to send a message :q! (the Vim style).

Currently there are many problems:

Anyway, this project is in its very preliminery stage. It is functional, but there are still lots of things to do.

If you are interested, please feel free to contribute.