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Articles / desktop / Win32

Chat Client Server

4.21/5 (72 votes)
19 May 2007CPOL1 min read 1   43K  
An implementation of chat client and server with win32 sockets
Sample Image - chat_client_server.jpg - Click to enlarge image

Introduction

Recently I got myself introduced to socket programming. I read through many books and articles to get an insight into the subject. After learning a bit, I decided to share my knowledge with the world. For this purpose, I created a simple console based chat application. I hope this will be a good reference code for C++ socket programming. I am going to introduce the following concepts to you here.

  • Sockets
  • Multi threading

What is Chat Client Server?

The demo project given along with this article consists of two console-based applications.

Chat Server

Chat server is an application which does the following operations:

  • Listens for incoming calls from clients. Client running in any PC can connect to the server if IP address of the server is known.
  • Listens for messages from all the connected clients.
  • Broadcasts the message from clients to all the clients connected to the server.
  • You can also type-in messages in the server, which will be broadcasted to all the clients.

Chat Client

Chat client does the following things:

  • Sends messages to server as well as to all the connected clients.
  • Views the messages from all the clients and server.

Please download the PDF document to read the rest of the documentation. I have created a PDF because the article consists of 2-3 diagrams.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)