socket-chat

Instant messaging application that allows for client-to-client communication over sockets. Socket-chat is built in C with GTK4 desktop client and a server backed by MongoDB and Redis

Features

• Account creation and password-based login
• Friend list display
• Multiple one-on-one conversation display
• Group conversations (more than 3 users)
• Storage of user data and their converations
• Native desktop GUI (GTK4) for the client

Project Structure

socket-chat/
├── client/   # GTK4 client source files
├── server/   # Server source files (socket handling, MongoDB, Redis)
├── lib/      # Shared library code used by both client and server
├── Makefile  # Build rules for the client and server
└── README.md

Requirements

Make sure the following are installed on your system:

• gcc and make
• pkg-config
• GTK4 development libraries (for the client)
• MongoDB C driver (libmongoc-1.0, libbson-1.0)
• hiredis (Redis C client)
• A running MongoDB instance
• A running Redis instance On Debian/Ubuntu-based systems, the development libraries can typically be installed with:

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libgtk-4-dev libmongoc-1.0-0 libmongoc-dev libbson-dev libhiredis-dev

Building

The project is built using make.

# Build both the server and client (default target)
make
# or explicitly
make all
 
# Build just the server
make server
 
# Build just the GUI client
make client

This produces two binaries:

• s.out — the server
• c.out — the client