Chat Server

A simple chat server written in python.

Features

The features of chatserver include:

• Optional TLS
• User accounts
• Chat Rooms

TLS Certificates

Setup is only currently required if you want to use tls. To do this you need to generate a crt and key file.

mkdir certs
cd certs
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout chatserv.key -x509 -days 365 -out chatserv.crt

Running The Server

Pip

You can install chatserver using pip.

pip install --upgrade chatserver
chatserver

Build Locally

Make sure poetry is installed and up to date.

pip install --upgrade poetry

Install all the dependencies

poetry install

You can now run the project from outside poetry's virtual env

poetry run chatserver

Or from within it

chatserver

If you want to use TLS you need to set environment variables:

• CERT_FILE
• KEY_FILE
• PORT

With Docker

You can either build locally or use the image from the registry

# Build locally
docker build -t chatserver .
docker run --name chatserver_name -p 7878:7878 chatserver

# Using the image from the registry
docker build -t chatserver .
docker run --name chatserver_name -p 7878:7878 registry.gitlab.com/mokytis/python-chatserver:latest

To use tls you will need to mount a direcory containg the crt and key files and set enviornment variables.

Example:

docker run -i -t -d \
    -p 7878:7878 \
    -v /path/to/certs/directory:/certs \
    -e CERT_FILE='/certs/chatserv.crt' \
    -e KEY_FILE='/certs/chatserv.key' \
    --name chatserver
    chatserver

Connecting To The Server

No TLS

If the server is not using tls you can connect to the server using any TCP client.

nc localhost 7878

TLS

If the server is using TLS you can connect using openssl

openssl s_client -connect localhost:7878