README.md

Django Private Chat2

New and improved https://github.com/Bearle/django-private-chat

Chat app for Django, powered by Django Channels, Websockets & Asyncio

Documentation

The full documentation will be at https://django-private-chat2.readthedocs.io.

Quickstart

Install django_private_chat2:

pip install django_private_chat2

Add it to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'django_private_chat2.apps.DjangoPrivateChat2Config',
    ...
)

Add django_private_chat2's URL patterns:

from django.urls import re_path, include


urlpatterns = [
    ...
    re_path(r'', include('django_private_chat2.urls', namespace='django_private_chat2')),
    ...
]

Add django_private_chat2's websocket URLs to your asgi.py:

django_asgi_app = get_asgi_application()
from channels.routing import ProtocolTypeRouter, URLRouter
from channels.auth import AuthMiddlewareStack
from django_private_chat2 import urls
application = ProtocolTypeRouter({
    "http": django_asgi_app,
    "websocket": AuthMiddlewareStack(
        URLRouter(urls.websocket_urlpatterns)
    ),
})

Important:

django_private_chat2 doesn't provide any endpoint to fetch users (required to start new chat, for example) It's up to you to do so. The example app does it in urls.py so feel free to copy the handler from there if you wish.

Support

It's important for us to have django_private_chat2 thoroughly tested.

Using github actions, we're able to have django_private_chat2 tested against python3.6, python3.7, python3.8, python3.9, python3.10 with Django 3.0, Django 3.1, Django 3.2, Django 4.0

You can view the builds here:

https://github.com/Bearle/django_private_chat2/actions

The builds are composed of officially supported Django & Python combinations.

Please file an issue if you have any problems with any combination of the above.

Features

Django-related

-:white_check_mark: Fully-functional example app

-:white_check_mark: Uses Django admin

-:white_check_mark: Supports pluggable User model (and accounts for non-integer primary keys, too)

-:white_check_mark: Doesn't require Django Rest Framework (views are based off django.views.generic)

-:white_check_mark: Configurable via settings

-:white_check_mark: Fully translatable

-:white_check_mark: Uses Django storage system & FileField for file uploads (swappable)

Functionality-related

-:white_check_mark: Soft deletable messages

-:white_check_mark: Read/unread messages

-:white_check_mark: Random id (send message first, write to database later)

-:white_check_mark: Supports text & file messages

-:white_check_mark: Gracefully handles errors

-:white_check_mark: Support 'typing' statuses

-:white_check_mark: Upload the file first, send the message later (async uploads) - potential for file ref re-use later

... and more

Example app frontend features

1. Auto reconnected websocket
2. Toasts about errors & events
3. Send text messages
4. Search for users
5. Create new chat with another user
6. Online/offline status
7. Realtime messaging via websocket
8. Last message
9. Auto-avatar (identicon) based on user id
10. Connection status display
11. Typing... status
12. Message delivery status (sent, received, waiting, etc.)
13. Message history
14. Persistent chat list
15. Read / unread messages
16. Unread messages counters (updates when new messages are received)
17. Send file messages (upload them to server)

TODO

Frontend (example app) & backend

1. Pagination support on frontend
   1. For messages
   2. For dialogs
2. Example app only - user list
   1. ✅ Endpoint
   2. ✅ UI
3. ✅ New dialog support
4. Online's fetching on initial load
5. Last message
   1. ✅ In fetch
   2. ✅ In new dialog
   3. ✅ On arriving message
6. ✅ Read / unread/ unread count
7. Last seen
8. Send photo
9. ✅ Send file
10. Reply to message
11. Delete message
12. Forward message
13. Search for dialog (username)
    1. ✅ Frontend (local)
    2. Server based - won't do, out of the scope of the project
14. ✅ Fake data generator (to test & bench) - done via factories in tests
15. Cache dialogs (get_groups_to_add) - ?
16. Move views to async views - ?
17. Add some sounds
    1. New message
    2. New dialog
    3. Sent message received db_id
18. Optimize /messages/ endpoint
19. ✅Some tests
20. Full test coverage
21. Migration from v1 guide
22. Documentation
23. self-messaging (Saved messages)

Running Tests

Does the code actually work?

source <YOURVIRTUALENV>/bin/activate
(myenv) $ pip install tox
(myenv) $ tox

Development commands

pip install -r requirements_dev.txt
invoke -l

Credits

Tools used in rendering this package:

• Cookiecutter
• cookiecutter-djangopackage

Paid support

If you wish to have professional help from the authors of django_private_chat2, or simply hire Django experts to solve a particular problem, please contact us via email tech at bearle.ru or Bearle in telegram