Chatserver Design Document

Planned Design

• chatserver
  • Responds to the following messages:
    • { connect, { ServerPid, username } }
      • This will reject a connection if your username is already taken.
      • otherwise, the user is added to the 'list of connected users' in some fashion.
    • { quit, { ServerPid } }
    • { join, { ServerPid, channelname } }
      • Only allows a user to join the same channel once.
      • If you're the first user to join this channel, create the corresponding channel.
      • Proxy the join message on behalf of the sender to this channel (which is its own running OTP server)
    • { part, { ServerPid, channelname } }
      • Removes the user from the channel with that name.
      • If not in the channel or no channel by that name, 'succeed.'
• channel
  • this is really the original design, as far as I can tell...

Original Design

The structure below represents the first "README-Driven Development" design doc the server was begun with. It's pretty clear from looking at it that it doesn't support "channels" or "rooms", and rather the thing I'm calling a chatserver below is really more like the channel concept, and there should be a different server that you initially connect to and that manages 'users' as opposed to 'users in this channel'.

• chatserver
  • Responds to the following messages:
    • { join, { Pid, username }
    • { send, { Pid, message } }
    • { nicklist, Pid }
    • { part, Pid }
  • Supports the following records:
    • { state { listeners=[], messages=[] } }
    • { message, { username, text } }
    • { user, { username, pid } }