Flask Group Chat Application

This is a simple group chat application built using Python's Flask framework. The application implements the Observer design pattern to manage and notify users in a chat room.

Features

• Real-time group chat functionality.
• User notifications when someone joins or leaves the chat.
• UI built with basic HTML and CSS for a clean and user-friendly interface.
• Dockerized for easy deployment.

Design Pattern: Observer

This application uses the Observer design pattern to manage the interactions between users in the chat room. The Observer pattern is a behavioral design pattern that defines a one-to-many dependency between objects so that when one object changes state, all its dependents are notified and updated automatically.

For more detailed information on the Observer pattern, you can visit this resource.

How It Works

• ChatRoom (Subject): The ChatRoom class maintains a list of clients (observers) and notifies them of any state changes (e.g., when a user joins or leaves the chat).
• Client (Observer): The Client class represents a user in the chat room. When a user sends a message, the ChatRoom notifies all clients of the new message.
• Users are prompted to enter their name when they join the chat. If they leave the chat, all remaining users are notified.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python 3.x
• Flask
• Docker (optional, for containerized deployment)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/kecheste/flask_chat.git
   cd flask-chat-app

2. Create a virtual environment:

   python3 -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate

3. Install the dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Run the application:

   python app.py

5. Open your web browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5000 to access the chat application.

Docker Deployment

1. Build the Docker image:

   docker build -t flask-chat .

   or

   docker pull kecheste/flask-chat:v1.0

2. Run the Docker container:

   docker run -d -p 5000:5000 flask-chat:v1.0

3. Access the application at http://localhost:5000.

File Structure

.
├── app.py               # Main application file
├── requirements.txt     # Python dependencies
├── Dockerfile           # Dockerfile for containerizing the app
├── .dockerignore        # Files and directories to ignore in Docker build
└── templates
    └── index.html       # HTML template for the chat interface