Chatroom Help

[pollock77]

Hello!

I'm a relatively new programmer and I would like to create a chat room.

I would like it to be similar to this:

http://thematrixlobby.co.uk/members/lobby/

username: chloec
password: 102030

As far as I know, this chat uses the $ENV{REMOTE_USER} to access a user file, which is simple enough for me. However, I need some help with the actual chatroom. I need help with writing the posts made by users into a directory, and making the posts not show after 15 minutes or so.

Any help?

 

[siberian]

I don't think anyone here wants to write your code for you but as you progress please come to us with specific issues in your code.

My only suggestion is 'use a database', writing flatfiles to disk and managing them is a real pain. With SQL you can just say 'give me all the posts from the last 15 minutes', its a lot cleaner and super duper faster.

 

[pollock77]

Thanks for the tip.

 

[PaulTEG]

$ENV{'REMOTE_USER'} is the name of the user logged on to the client machine, and its unlikely that any serious programmer would depend on that as an identifier.

Most likely that the username and password are validated against a database, or possibly a .htaccess file, and on successful validaton, a cookie is set to determine the validity of the connection.

have a look on

http://search.cpan.org,

some of these components have probably been already written, and there are a number of free scripts that carry out the functionality you require, but I'd go with the modules if you get a match, rather than the scripts

HTH
--Paul

It's important in life to always strike a happy medium, so if you see someone with a crystal ball, and a smile on their face ...

 

[pollock77]

Hi again

I was just wondering if anyone here knew of a good online tutorial or book that would helpful to me.

Thanks!

 

[tviman]

If you googled for "chat room script" I'll bet you'd find more than you would want to read. This is a pretty ambitious endeavor for someone new to perl programming and I would suggest that maybe you try sharpen some of your perl skills befoer attempting such a larger project.

There's always a better way. The fun is trying to find it!