🗨️ Chat Application

📄 Description

This is a simple chat application built using Java, which allows multiple clients to connect to a server. The server handles multiple client connections and broadcasts messages to all connected clients. The server also stores messages in a MySQL database. The client connects to the server and can send messages, view messages from the server, and ping the server to measure latency.

🌟 Features

• 🌍 Multiple client connections
• 📡 Real-time message broadcasting
• 🏓 Ping functionality to measure server response time
• 💾 Messages are saved to a MySQL database
• 📜 The ability to view previous messages from the database

🔧 Components

The project consists of two main components:

1. Server

• 🖥️ ServerSocket: Listens for incoming client connections on port 9999.
• 🔄 ConnectionHandler: Handles communication with each client, including sending and receiving messages.
• 📢 Message Broadcasting: Sends messages to all connected clients.
• 🗄️ Database Integration: Saves messages to a MySQL database and retrieves previous messages for new clients.
• ⏱️ Ping: Measures the round-trip latency between the client and server.

2. Client

• 🌐 Socket: Connects to the server on 127.0.0.1 (localhost) and port 6666.
• 📝 InputHandler: Reads user input and sends messages to the server.
• 💬 Message Display: Displays messages received from the server.

⚙️ Requirements

1. Java 8 or higher for compiling and running the code.

2. MySQL Database:

   • The MySQL database named messenger should be set up with a table texts for storing messages.

   • You can create the table using the following SQL query:

     CREATE TABLE texts (
         id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
         message TEXT NOT NULL
     );

3. JDBC: Ensure that the MySQL JDBC driver (com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver) is included in the classpath for database operations.

4. Ports:

   • Server listens on port 9999.
   • Client connects to the server on port 6666.

🏃‍♂️ How to Run

1. Start the Server 💻

Compile and run the Server.java file.

javac Server.java
java Server

The server will start listening for client connections on port 9999.

2. Start the Client 📱

Compile and run the Client.java file.

javac Client.java
java Client

The client will connect to the server on 127.0.0.1:6666.

3. Interacting with the Application 💬

• Once connected, you will be prompted to enter a username.
• You can then send messages, which will be broadcast to all other clients.
• Type exit to leave the chat.
• You can ping the server by typing ping to measure latency.

💾 Database Operations

Messages sent by clients are saved to the texts table in the messenger database. On connecting, the client can view all previous messages saved in the database.

⚠️ Shutdown Procedure

• Clients can type exit to leave the chat and close the connection.
• The server automatically shuts down if the connection is lost or an error occurs.