Simple modular chat

This repository contains a full implementation of a chat server and a client using a custom protocol with a custom format

It was also an exercise for me to make a modular project - the client compiles into a shared library with a straightforward C API which can be used to make a variety of front ends.

Under the hood, it uses the cross-platform SDL_net library for TCP communication.

The structure of this repository

The repository contains three directories (+the frontends directory), they can be thought of independent projects (although they can obviously use each other's header files)

• The server, which compiles into the server executable
• The client, which compiles into a shared library with a tiny C API
• The frontends, this folder can contain all the front-ends (GUIs, bots etc.) that use the client API
• The protlib is a tiny library that facilitates communication using the protocol, it is used by both the client and the server

Make sure to check out the READMEs in the individual modules.

Implementing a front end

Implementing a front-end is as easy as cloning this repo, compiling the client with make (see the specifics in the client/README), creating a new folder in frontends and doing whatever you want (you'd probably also want to compile the server for testing).

Licensing

For licensing info about the individual modules, check out their respective LICENSE files.
The server, client and protlib directories, including all files in the root directory, are in the public domain. The individual front-ends can have any kind of an open source license.