Chatbox

9th March 2023

In response to numerous suggestions, I have decided to explore the use of Rust programming language. The goal of this project is to create a chat application that deviates from the traditional approach by not having a dedicated client. Instead, the plan is to enable communication through a tool like netcat.

The project initially offers a single channel, namely #general, although additional channels may be added in the future if deemed necessary. The application will support several user commands which will be documented below.

Usage

To join a server to chat all you need to run is: nc <server> 3000 and you can start chatting.

If you want to load default user settings you can create a file and put in commands that will run on first connection.

user_setup

/color 50
/nick Ben
Hello, World!

Then you can load it by running:

cat user_setup - | nc <target-server> 3000

Commands

• /nick <user_nickname>: This command allows the user to set their desired nickname.

• /privmsg <user_nickname> <msg>: Users can send private messages to each other using this command.

• /color <color_id>: This command enables users to change the color of their display name. The color_id parameter should be a number between 0 and 255.

• /list: This command will list all the active users on the chat server.