Flask Chat Application

Introduction

This project is a real-time chat application designed for corporate use, where companies can have dedicated chat rooms for their teams to communicate instantly. The Flask Chat Application is built on top of Flask, a micro web framework written in Python, known for its simplicity and flexibility.

The application features user authentication, real-time messaging through web sockets provided by Pusher, and a database-backed persistence layer using Flask-SQLAlchemy. It allows users from the same company to join a shared chat room where they can send messages and receive updates immediately, facilitating seamless communication within the organization.

Features

• User Authentication: Secure login system for users with password hashing and verification.
• Real-time Messaging: Leveraging Pusher's channels, users experience instantaneous communication.
• Company-Based Chat Rooms: Users can participate in chat rooms that are scoped to their company.
• Database Integration: Persistent storage of messages, user accounts, and company information.
• Environment Configuration: Sensitive information and configuration settings are managed via environment variables, ensuring security best practices.

Technologies

• Flask: A lightweight WSGI web application framework.
• Flask-SQLAlchemy: An ORM for Flask applications to handle database operations.
• Flask-Login: Handles user session management in Flask applications.
• Pusher: A hosted service that provides real-time web socket channels.
• SQLite: A C-language library that implements a small, fast, self-contained SQL database engine.
• Werkzeug: A comprehensive WSGI web application library.
• python-dotenv: Reads key-value pairs from a .env file and can set them as environment variables.
• cryptography: A package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers.

Setup

To get this application running locally on your machine, you need to follow these steps:

1. Environment Setup: Ensure that Python 3 and pip (Python's package installer) are installed on your machine.

2. Clone the Repository: Use Git to clone the repository to your local machine.

   git clone https://github.com/sapg-dev/lemurcom.git
   cd local-repository-directory
   

3. Configuration

   Configure your application by creating a .env file in the root directory of your project. This file should contain the following configurations:

   SECRET_KEY='your_very_secret_key'
   DATABASE_URL='sqlite:///chat.db'
   PUSHER_APP_ID='your_pusher_app_id'
   PUSHER_KEY='your_pusher_key'
   PUSHER_SECRET='your_pusher_secret'
   PUSHER_CLUSTER='your_pusher_cluster'
   

4. Install Dependencies: '''bash pip install -r requirements.txt

5. Running the Application '''bash flask run

Application Structure

The application is structured as follows:

    - db.py: Contains the SQLAlchemy ORM models for User, Company, ChatRoom, and Message. This file defines the schema of the SQLite database and includes methods for password hashing and verification.

    -terminalChat.py: The main Flask application file that includes routes for user authentication, message handling, chat room management, and real-time functionality integration. This file also handles application initialization and configuration.

    -templates/: This directory should contain HTML files for the application's views. (Note: You must create this based on Flask's requirements and your UI design)

    -static/: A directory for static files like CSS, JavaScript, and images. (Note: This should be created to store your static content)

Contributing

Contributions to this project are welcome. Please fork the repository and submit a pull request with your feature or fix.