💬 Messenger

A web messenger built with Django, featuring real-time messaging.

I wrote this project when I was 13 — entirely on my own, without any AI Agent. The code is a learning project and naive in places, but it works "live" over WebSocket.

The project is unfinished and won't be developed further — it stays here as a keepsake and an example.

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Screenshots

Features

• Real-time messaging — delivered over WebSocket (Django Channels + Redis), no page reloads.
• Online status — track user presence and last-seen time.
• Unread messages — indicators for new messages in chats.
• User profiles — avatar, bio, city, age, phone number.
• Email authentication — custom user model instead of the default one.
• Posts — publish text and images on a profile.
• Profile editing (work in progress).

Tech Stack

Category	Technologies
Backend	Python 3.11, Django 4.2
Real-time	Django Channels, channels-redis, Daphne (ASGI), Redis
Frontend	Django Templates, Bootstrap 5, Font Awesome
Database	SQLite (default)
Media & utils	Pillow, django-resized, django-phonenumber-field
Configuration	python-decouple (.env)

Getting Started

Requires Python 3.11+ and Redis.

1. Clone the repository and enter the project folder

   git clone https://github.com/leo-proger/Messenger.git
   cd Messenger

2. Create and activate a virtual environment

   python -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate   # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Configure environment variables

   Copy .env.example to .env:

   cp .env.example .env

   Generate a SECRET_KEY and put it into .env:

   python -c "from django.core.management.utils import get_random_secret_key; print(get_random_secret_key())"

5. Start Redis on port 6379 (e.g. via Docker)

   docker run -p 6379:6379 redis

6. Apply migrations

   python manage.py makemigrations
   python manage.py migrate

7. Run the server

   python manage.py runserver 8000

   The app will be available at http://localhost:8000.

Project Structure

Messenger/
├── app/        # Project configuration (settings, asgi, routing, urls)
├── chats/      # Chats and messages: models, WebSocket consumers, signals
├── users/      # Users, profiles, posts, online status
├── templates/  # HTML templates (Bootstrap 5)
├── static/     # Static assets: CSS, JS, images
└── media/      # User-uploaded files

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.