OCaml Chat Server

This project is an implementation of a simple chat server in OCaml using the Lwt library for asynchronous programming.

Features

• Allows multiple clients to connect simultaneously.
• Clients can send messages to the server, and the server broadcasts those messages to all connected clients.
• When a new client joins, a join message is sent to all currently connected clients.

Video Demonstration

chatroom-demo.copy.mov

Purpose

The purpose of this project was to deepen my understanding of Ocaml and functional programming languages after taking a course on it during Spring 2024. I have always wanted to implement my own simple chatroom, and doing it in a functional language seemed like a challenge!

Prerequisites

• OCaml
• Lwt

Installation/Usage

1. Clone the repository

2. Navigate to the project directory

3. Run dune build to build

4. Run dune exec server to spin up the server on port 9000

5. Run dune exec client to start up a client. You can start up more than one instance of the client. Just open a new terminal window, or use another machine on the same network!

6. To exit a client instance, type \exit and hit enter. You can also press Control-C.

7. To stop the server, press Control-C with the server terminal window in focus.