CypherChat

Secure chat application for organizations

Getting Started

Dependencies

Before starting, ensure you have the following tools and technologies installed:

• Node.js
• Android Studio (for Android development support)
• Python 3.x
• Expo (for React Native development)
• Django (for backend development)
• PostgreSQL (database system)
• Redis (for caching and message brokering)
• Ngrok (for exposing local servers to the internet)

Dev Setup

1. Download and Install Dependencies:

• PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresql.org/download/
• Ngrok: https://ngrok.com/download
• Redis:
  • General download: https://redis.io/download
  • For Windows, download Redis-x64-5.0.14.1.zip from https://github.com/tporadowski/redis/releases, unzip, and run redis-server.exe.
• OpenAI Setup: Follow the Quickstart guide at https://platform.openai.com/docs/quickstart to set up your API key and environment.

Installion of dependencies

1. Frontend

cd frontend && npm install

2. Backend on Mac

python -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
cd backend
pip install -r requirements.txt
python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

3. Backend on Windows

python3 -m venv env
.\env\bin\activate
cd backend
pip install -r requirements.txt
python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

For the backend setup, we need to initalize a Python virtual environment, activate it, and install your dependencies

Backend setup

Follow these steps to set up your project environment:

1. Initialize and Activate the Virtual Environment

• For Unix/Linux/macOS:

  python3 -m venv env
  source env/bin/activate

• For Windows:

  python -m venv env
  .\env\Scripts\activate

2. Install Dependencies

Install the required project dependencies by running:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Generate SQL Schemas on Your Local PostgreSQL Instance

Ensure your local PostgreSQL instance is running, then execute the SQL schema generation commands specific to your project.

Note for Windows Users Regarding Database Configuration:

In the settings.py file, modify the DATABASES configuration to match your local PostgreSQL setup:

DATABASES = {
    "default": {
        "ENGINE": "django.db.backends.postgresql",
        "NAME": "postgres",
        "USER": "postgres",
        "PASSWORD": "your_password_here",
        "HOST": "localhost",
        "PORT": "5432",
    }
}

Replace "your_password_here" with your actual PostgreSQL user password.

Example run of making sure your virtual environment is running:

richardli@Richards-MacBook-Pro cypherchat % source env/bin/activate
(env) richardli@Richards-MacBook-Pro cypherchat % 

The brackets of your virtual environment name should be beside your terminal name

Running our code

View our Makefile for more commands to run based on your environment

1. Initialize a redis-server

make redis

2. Initialize Backend

make server

3. On another terminal window, setup ngrok

make ngrok

4. Setup frontend environment variables

• Setup environment variables

cd frontend 
touch .env

The .env should contain:

EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL='ngrok-url'
EXPO_PUBLIC_OPENAI_API_KEY='openai-apiKey'

Example: when you run make ngrok this is the output:

                                                                                                                                               
Full request capture now available in your browser: https://ngrok.com/r/ti                                                                     
                                                                                                                                               
Session Status                online                                                                                                           
Account                       richardliy03@gmail.com (Plan: Free)                                                                              
Version                       3.8.0                                                                                                            
Region                        United States (us)                                                                                               
Web Interface                 http://127.0.0.1:4040                                                                                            
Forwarding                    https://c7f4-2001-1970-51a4-e00-7172-66bc-bd8c-98af.ngrok-free.app -> http://127.0.0.1:8000/                     
                                                                                                                                               
Connections                   ttl     opn     rt1     rt5     p50     p90                                                                      
                              0       0       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00 

To get the ngrok-url copy the forwarding link and get rid of the https://

EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL='c7f4-2001-1970-51a4-e00-7172-66bc-bd8c-98af.ngrok-free.app'
EXPO_PUBLIC_OPENAI_API_KEY='...'

5. Run frontend on another terminal window

make app

Authors

Contributors names and contact info

Michael Timmer Richard Li Kavith Ranchagoda Christian Petricca Reza Jodeiri