CSeams

Collaborative Communication Tool built in Python Flask for University Assessment

Description

Seams is a web service built using Python for its backend similar to MS Teams. It was built in collaboration with 3 other students as a university project. It was built using Agile methods and regularly updated on a seperate repository on Gitlab. This repository is for the purposes of showcasing this work. The backend was constructed by the group following the RESTful API structure (CRUD).

Features

• Persistent data.
• Register users and login to create a session, logout to end your session. Accounts can also be recovered using email. Passwords stored are hashed.
• Create and delete channels. Channels can be joined and invites sent. Posts can be made in channels. Users can be promoted and demoted as channel owners
• Direct messaging between users.
• User details can be changed in the profile section including profile pictures.
• Notifications.
• Message searching, sharing, pinning, and reacting.
• Time delayed message sending (send later).
• Channel Standup feature, where users will submit their standups to a channel within a given time frame and will be sent once time is elapsed.
• User statistics.

Technologies

• Python3
• Flask
• Pickling and Hashing

Install and Run

• Install Python 3.7.3
• Clone repository
• Install module requirements listed in requirements.txt using the command pip3 install -r requirements.txt. If errors with pg_config occur, try running this command sudo apt install libpq-dev.
• navigate to path .../backend and start server running command python3 -m src.server
• In a seperate terminal window, navigate to path .../frontend and run the command python3 frontend.py 8021 where 8021 is the default port. This can be changed in .../backend/src/config.py
• follow the link printed in the frontend terminal in the browser of your choice.

Credits

The backend was not solely developed by myself, I would like to attribute Westley Lo, Amy Pham, and Reuel Nkomo as key collaborators in this project. Furthermore university CSE staff for the given frontend and assessment (university will not be listed to avoid academic misconduct).