Making a chatroom...

mofu

HI,

I was wondering if you could make a chatroom with visual basic? Or do you have to use java? And also could you use asp. Ive seen on hotscripts.com the are scripts for a chatroom done in asp.
Thanks for any help,
Matthew Mackenzie

phobos

You must remember a programming language is just a tool for getting a computer to do something (ie program it). So having said that it is possible to do it in many languages, but some languages will have readily available a subset of tools that will make the development process more appealing than using other methods.

Java being a network language, let's you do something like that quite easily, but so does VB. You could even use a combination of the two.

Anyway the following is a link to a chat/file sharing app coded in VB: http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.Asp?ID=2742

also try doing a search for a chat example on the follwing sites
vbcode.com
vbsquare.com
vbworld.com

HTH

;-phobos-)

Mutz

You Can Download a Free (Evaluation Copy) Chat Applet from www.jpilot.com if its not for corporate or college needs.

<edit>. I Should probably mention its IRC based </edit>

mofu

Thanks..

Phobos, you seem to be fairly nifty with Java, so maybe you could help on a small query of mine...

In java, if you have a chat applet which connects to a server -socket program running on the server and then this applet enables you to "chat" to others connected...does this sound like a "good" way ie. not too trying on the resources or are there more conventional ways to do it?

cheers for any info.

phobos

The one thing about developing Java applets is to consider this thing called the applet sandbox concept. For security reasons a Java applet cannot connect to any server unless its located at the same address as the HTTP server it was downloaded from. So take for example an IRC applet, would only be able to connect back to an IRC server that was running along side a web server on the same "server" oriented machine.

But there is also a way around this. Take the jPilot applet for example. When you download this applet to your browser, it will try and connect to a specified IRC server (with an address that is most likely not the same as the web server it came from). So to accomplish this (without SecurityExceptions being thrown) the browser asks you for permission to let the applet complete the task of connecting ot a remote machine. Once you grant this, the applet can behave like any other IRC based client.

To clarifty what I've been talking about take a look at the following tutorial: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/applet/overview/security.html

HTH

PS: The Java applet method will let you get away with the concept of a thin client, in that all the user needs on their machine is a browser (with the java plugin installed, which is common). After that they just need to give your applet permission to run. Another method would be for you to create an application instead of an applet. With this you don't have to worry about things like the "sandbox". But the drawback here, is that the user must download your client software, and load it in to a valid JVM themselves. If you have a IRC server already written in some language you are not bound to writing the client in the same language (a lot of newcommers to distributed applications forget this). So let's say you have Java ServerSockets listening away on the server, you could use (dare I say) WinSock components in a VB app for the client, and you could throw together a scaleable user interface in a matter of mins. It's your choice

;-phobos-)

cheers for the info phobos!