Smallchat Project Description

What is the project about?

Smallchat is a minimalistic chat server implementation in C, designed as a programming example and educational resource. It's evolving through a series of YouTube videos demonstrating system software development concepts.

What problem does it solve?

It primarily serves as a practical demonstration of how a simple chat server works, including handling multiple clients, basic networking, and I/O multiplexing. It's not intended to be a full-featured, production-ready chat system, but rather a simplified learning tool. It does solve the problem of providing a very basic, multi-user chat experience.

What are the features of the project?

• Basic chat functionality: users can connect, set a nickname, and send messages.
• Fan-out message delivery: messages are sent to all connected clients.
• Minimalistic design: initially implemented in ~200 lines of C.
• Works with telnet and nc (netcat) as clients (initially).
• Planned features (as part of the video series):
  • Input/Output Buffering.
  • Dictionary data structure for client state management.
  • Custom client with line editing and asynchronous event handling.
  • Chat channels.
  • Advanced I/O APIs (beyond select(2)).
  • Symmetric encryption.

What are the technologies used in the project?

• C programming language.
• Sockets API for networking.
• select(2) for I/O multiplexing (initially).
• Planned: More advanced I/O APIs, custom data structures (dictionary), potentially encryption libraries.
• telnet and nc used as basic clients.

What are the benefits of the project?

• Educational: provides a clear, step-by-step example of system programming concepts.
• Simple and understandable: the codebase is intentionally kept small and focused.
• Demonstrates practical application of networking and I/O handling.
• Serves as a foundation for learning more advanced system programming techniques.

What are the use cases of the project?

• Learning about network programming and server development.
• Understanding I/O multiplexing and client state management.
• Experimenting with system programming concepts in C.
• As a starting point for building more complex chat or networking applications.
• Following along with the associated YouTube video series.