pychatter is a direct chat tool, which may be run to communicate over a local network.

Communication happens over the localhost port 8080.

This is primarily an exercise in duplex client-server communication using websockets.

Install the pychatter package using pip, then run the package:

python -m pip install pychatter
python -m pychatter

Hosting a chat server can be done directly inside the graphical user interface, or a dedicated server may be started from the command line using:

python -m pychatter --server

The chat application supports external configuration files. Place a file named config.json in the directory from which the application is run.

The configuration file currently supports one setting, "chat_format", which is used to display chat messages. It supports the following placeholder strings:

• %T: time
• %U: user name
• %M: message

An example config.json could contain the following data:

{
	"chat_format": "%T: %U: %M"
}

To contribute to this repository, please read the contribution guidelines.

Written in Python 3.7.3.

This repository is open-source software available under the MIT License.

Please raise an issue for code changes. To reach out, please send an email to [email protected].