Created By Ethan Joachim Eldridge License: MIT

What is this?
This is a simple chat program I made to talk to someone without needing a username or password on some random service somewhere.

Why would you do that?
Because when people go to other countries and don't check their facebook account it's nice to chat with them somehow.

How do I use it?

Install qdecoder
You need to install qdecoder in order to be able to parse and handle the CGI requests. qDecoder was chosen after reviewing the various libraries listed here. To install it, download the tarball and untar it tar -xzvf <tarballname> then run ./configure and make install, you may need to run the make command as your super user.

Setup WebServer
Next, setup Apache for CGI. An example configuration might look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
         ServerName www.pci.dev
         DocumentRoot /home/user/programs/pci/www
         <Directory />
                 Options Indexes
                 AllowOverride None
         </Directory>
         Alias /pci /home/user/programs/pci/bin
         <Directory />
                 AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
                 AllowOverride None
                 Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
                 Order allow,deny
                 Allow from all
         </Directory>
 
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.cgi.log
        LogLevel warn

</VirtualHost>

Note that it is important to setup both static front end (www) and the CGI directory (pci). One of the biggest 'gotchas' is the permissions on the data directory. If after attempting to create an account the data directory does not exist or repeatedly fails, then you should check the permissions of the place specified by the config.h file and make sure it is writable by apache. One of the best guides for doing so is contained in this S.O. question

Setup Your Config file
A sample config file is included in the headers, the best way to setup a config file is to copy this file, edit it, and rename it to config.h. If you do not want to do this manually, you can run make config and it will save you the grunt work of typing the commands to do so. Note that if a config file already exists it will be moved to config.h.bak. Config files are opened with vi(m) when you use the make command.

Compile the Scripts
All you need to do is run make from the root of the repository.

Compile the WebSite
What you say? Compile the website? Yes. The HTML is generated via Harp and you'll need to have that installed. Simply update the harp.json file with the proper domain name and run a harp compile. It shouldn't take long and then you'll have the front end setup and ready.

Setup your hosts file (if local)
On most linux systems the hosts file is at /etc/hosts, on windows it is in system32 I believe (it's been a while since I've been on windozer). Add in the name that you have placed into your config's BASE_URL definition pointing to127.0.0.1

Technologies used

• Harp
• qdecoder
• C
• HTML/JS/CSS

General Outline of Code

#####CGI:

data.c -> routines to handle data processing such as:
 - Open and Create Files
 - Open and Create Directories
 - Check last modified times of files

user.c -> routines to handle user creation and registration
 - Create a user
 - Check for existence of a user

message.c -> routes to handle conversations
 - Create a conversation between 2 users
 - Update a conversation between 2 users
 - High level check if message has been updated since X

#####external:

create-user.c -> cgi script to handle POST to create account
list-user.c -> cgi script to list users for message selection
reply.c -> cgi script to update or create a conversation between users
conversations-with-user.c -> cgi script to view a list of conversations with a user
history-for-file.c -> cgi script to retrieve history between 2 users for a given day
poll.c -> cgi script responsible for polling the server for any chat changes
login.c
register.c

#####Static:

index -> login or register links
login -> login to the system
register -> register a user on the system
talk -> have a conversation with someone
history -> view previous conversations with people

talk.js -> main functionality for chatting,polling, and the core of the user experience
history.js -> script that faciliates browsing your chat history with users