Classroom Chat 🚀

A fast, offline-first, local area network (LAN) chat and file-sharing CLI designed for classrooms, labs, and local networks.

🛠️ Requirements & Installation

• Python 3.8+

Running Locally

Clone or download the folder and run:

python app.py

💬 Usage Instructions

1. Launch Classroom Chat

Run python app.py and enter your desired username.

2. Room Options

• Create a Room [C]: Enter a room name to host a new chat room. Your room will automatically be announced to nearby users on your Wi-Fi / local network.
• Join a Room [1, 2, ...]: Classroom Chat auto-discovers active rooms on your network. Type the number corresponding to the room you want to join.
• Refresh [R]: Re-scan the local network for newly created rooms.
• Quit [Q]: Exit the application.

⚡ In-Chat Commands

Once inside a room, you can use the following commands:

Note on File Downloads: Shared files are automatically received by everyone in the room and saved into a local downloads/ directory. Duplicate filenames are automatically renamed (e.g. notes (1).pdf) to protect existing files.

📤 How to Publish to PyPI (pip)

To make Classroom Chat installable via pip install classroom-chat:

Step 1: Install Packaging Tools

python -m pip install --upgrade build twine

Step 2: Build the Distribution Packages

Run from the project root directory:

python -m build

This generates .whl and .tar.gz files in the dist/ directory.

Step 3: Test Upload to TestPyPI (Optional but Recommended)

python -m twine upload --repository testpypi dist/*

Step 4: Upload to PyPI

python -m twine upload dist/*

Note: You will need an API token from pypi.org. Enter __token__ as username and your token as password when prompted.

Step 5: Install via pip

Once published, anyone can install and run:

pip install classroom-chat
classroom-chat