ChatPulse

ChatPulse is a real-time team chat application built with Flask and Socket.IO. It supports lightweight authentication, chat rooms, room search, and file sharing.

Features

• Real-time messaging with Socket.IO
• Username/password sign-in flow
• Room creation and room search
• File and image sharing in rooms
• SQLite-backed message persistence
• Docker and Render deployment support

Tech stack

• Backend: Python, Flask, Flask-SocketIO, SQLite
• Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• Runtime/Deploy: Gunicorn, Docker, Render, Procfile

Screenshots

Current screenshot:

You can add more screenshots later under this section as the UI evolves.

Installation and local setup

git clone https://github.com/Harshall25/ChatPulse.git
cd ChatPulse
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # Windows (PowerShell): .venv\\Scripts\\Activate.ps1
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env

Environment configuration

Set these values in .env or your shell:

• SECRET_KEY (required in production)
• FLASK_ENV (development or production)
• PORT (default 5000)
• DATABASE_PATH (default chat_app.db)
• SOCKETIO_CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS (default *)

Never commit .env files, API keys, passwords, or real-user data.

Run the app

python application.py

Open http://127.0.0.1:5000.

Run tests/checks

python - <<'PY'
import unittest
suite = unittest.defaultTestLoader.discover('.')
print(f"Discovered {suite.countTestCases()} test(s)")
result = unittest.TextTestRunner(verbosity=2).run(suite)
raise SystemExit(0 if result.wasSuccessful() else 1)
PY
python -m compileall application.py database.py helpers.py

Docker

Build and run locally:

docker build -t chatpulse .
docker run --rm -p 5000:5000 --env-file .env chatpulse

Or use Compose:

docker compose up --build

Deployment

See DEPLOYMENT.md and render.yaml for Render deployment guidance.

Contributing

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening issues or pull requests.

• Open issues: https://github.com/Harshall25/ChatPulse/issues
• New issue: https://github.com/Harshall25/ChatPulse/issues/new/choose

Code of Conduct

Contributors are expected to follow CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

License

No license file is currently present in this repository.

Without an explicit license, others generally cannot legally reuse, modify, or distribute this code beyond rights granted by the platform terms. Choose and add a license before accepting broad external contributions.