How to Easily Make a PHP Chat Application

How to Easily Make Chat application with PHP + SQL

Today I will tell you about creating simple Chat application using our existing login system. This will useful and most simple solution. We will able to chat with our logged members. We will use database to store messages.

Here is a sample:

• Live Chat Demo
• download in package

Step 1. HTML

As usual, we start with the HTML.

This main chat window.

index.html

<frameset rows="65%,35%" framespacing="1" frameborder="yes" border="1" bordercolor="#FF0000">
    <frame src="messages.php" name="main_frame">
    <frame src="main.php" name="login_frame" scrolling="no" noresize target="middle">
</frameset>

This is login form code.

login_form.html

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" />

<form class="login_form" method="post" action="main.php">
 <div>Username: <input type="text" name="username" /></div>
 <div>Password: <input type="password" name="password" /></div>
 <div><input type="submit" value="Login" name="Login" /></div>
</form>
<div>You can use username "User1" or "User2" or "User3" and password "qwerty" to login in system</div>

Here are new 3 template files to chat (2 to messages box and 1 to send message form):

chat_begin.html

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" />

<div class="chat_main">
 <h3>Chat</h3>

chat_end.html

</div>

chat_input.html

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" />

<form class="submit_form" method="post" action="main.php">
 <div><input type="text" name="s_message" /><input type="submit" value="Say" name="s_say" /></div>
</form>
<div>You can type anything in chat</div>

Step 2. CSS

Here are used CSS styles.

styles.css

.login_form {
 border: 1px solid #AAA;
 padding:10px;
}

h3 {margin-top:3px;}

.chat_main {
 border:1px solid #AAA;
 -moz-box-shadow:0 0 10px #ccc;
 -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 10px #ccc;
 width:350px;
 padding:10px;
 background:#f3f3f3;
}

.message {
 border:1px solid #AAA;
 margin:4px;
 padding:5px;
 -moz-border-radius:7px;
 -webkit-border-radius:7px;
 background:#ffffff;
}

.textf {
-moz-box-shadow:0 0 10px #CCCCCC;
-webkit-box-shadow:0 0 10px #CCCCCC;
border:1px solid #CCCCCC;
height:40px;
}

.submit {
-moz-border-radius:7px;
-webkit-border-radius:7px;
background:#F3F3F3;
border:1px solid #CCCCCC;
font-size:16px;
font-weight:bold;
height:35px;
margin-left:10px;
padding:5px;
}
.message span {
 font-size:10px;
 color:#888;
 margin-left:10px;
}

.submit_form {
 margin:10px 0px;
}

Step 3. SQL

We will need to execute next SQL in our database.

CREATE TABLE `s_chat_messages` (
`id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
`user` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL ,
`message` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL ,
`when` INT(11) NOT NULL ,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

Step 4. PHP

As you remember – we had ready easy authentication system. I moved it to external library file (inc/login.inc.php). This will useful for us – now code more structured and it comfortable to use in different places of code.

After I created new library to work with chat (inc/chat.inc.php). This class have next functions:

acceptMessages – function accept sent messages and store it in DB table

getMessages – return list of last 15 messages

After I created 2 last files: messages.php and main.php. First file used to draw list of messages. It have autoupdate each 5 second (I thing this is enough to our chat). Second draw login form and input field of chat. Where we due logged able to post text in chat.

Ok, here are all used PHP files:

main.php

<?php

// set error reporting level
if (version_compare(phpversion(), "5.3.0", ">=") == 1)
 error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_DEPRECATED);
else
 error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);

require_once('inc/login.inc.php');
require_once('inc/chat.inc.php');

// initialization of login system and generation code
$oSimpleLoginSystem = new SimpleLoginSystem();

$oSimpleChat = new SimpleChat();

// draw login box
echo $oSimpleLoginSystem->getLoginBox();

// draw chat application
$sChatResult = 'Need login before using';
if ($_COOKIE['member_name'] && $_COOKIE['member_pass']) {
 if ($oSimpleLoginSystem->check_login($_COOKIE['member_name'], $_COOKIE['member_pass'])) {
 $sChatResult = $oSimpleChat->acceptMessages();
 }
}
echo $sChatResult;

?>

messages.php

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5">
<?php

require_once('inc/chat.inc.php');
$oSimpleChat = new SimpleChat();
echo $oSimpleChat->getMessages();

?>

inc/chat.inc.php

<?php

// simple chat class
class SimpleChat {

    // DB variables
    var $sDbName;
    var $sDbUser;
    var $sDbPass;

    // constructor
    function SimpleChat() {
        //mysql_connect("localhost","username","password");
        $this->sDbName = 'database_name';
        $this->sDbUser = 'username';
        $this->sDbPass = 'password';
    }

    // adding to DB table posted message
    function acceptMessages() {
        if ($_COOKIE['member_name']) {
            if(isset($_POST['s_say']) && $_POST['s_message']) {
                $sUsername = $_COOKIE['member_name'];

                //the host, name, and password for your mysql
                $vLink = mysql_connect("localhost", $this->sDbUser, $this->sDbPass);

                //select the database
                mysql_select_db($this->sDbName);

                $sMessage = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['s_message']);
                if ($sMessage != '') {
                    mysql_query("INSERT INTO `s_chat_messages` SET `user`='{$sUsername}', `message`='{$sMessage}', `when`=UNIX_TIMESTAMP()");
                }

                mysql_close($vLink);
            }
        }

        ob_start();
        require_once('chat_input.html');
        $sShoutboxForm = ob_get_clean();

        return $sShoutboxForm;
    }

    function getMessages() {
        $vLink = mysql_connect("localhost", $this->sDbUser, $this->sDbPass);

        //select the database
        mysql_select_db($this->sDbName);

        //returning the last 15 messages
        $vRes = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `s_chat_messages` ORDER BY `id` ASC LIMIT 15");

        $sMessages = '';

        // collecting list of messages
        if ($vRes) {
            while($aMessages = mysql_fetch_array($vRes)) {
                $sWhen = date("H:i:s", $aMessages['when']);
                $sMessages .= '<div class="message">' . $aMessages['user'] . ': ' . $aMessages['message'] . '<span>(' . $sWhen . ')</span></div>';
            }
        } else {
            $sMessages = 'DB error, create SQL table before';
        }

        mysql_close($vLink);

        ob_start();
        require_once('chat_begin.html');
        echo $sMessages;
        require_once('chat_end.html');
        return ob_get_clean();
    }
}

?>

inc/login.inc.php

<?

// class SimpleLoginSystem
class SimpleLoginSystem {

    // variables
    var $aExistedMembers; // Existed members array

    // constructor
    function SimpleLoginSystem() {
        $this->aExistedMembers = array(
            'User1' => 'd8578edf8458ce06fbc5bb76a58c5ca4',
            'User2' => 'd8578edf8458ce06fbc5bb76a58c5ca4',
            'User3' => 'd8578edf8458ce06fbc5bb76a58c5ca4'
        );
    }

    function getLoginBox() {
        ob_start();
        require_once('login_form.html');
        $sLoginForm = ob_get_clean();

        $sLogoutForm = '<a href="'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'?logout=1">logout</a>';

        if ((int)$_REQUEST['logout'] == 1) {
            if (isset($_COOKIE['member_name']) && isset($_COOKIE['member_pass']))
                $this->simple_logout();
        }

        if ($_REQUEST['username'] && $_REQUEST['password']) {
            if ($this->check_login($_REQUEST['username'], MD5($_REQUEST['password']))) {
                $this->simple_login($_REQUEST['username'], $_REQUEST['password']);
                return 'Hello ' . $_REQUEST['username'] . '! ' . $sLogoutForm;
            } else {
                return 'Username or Password is incorrect' . $sLoginForm;
            }
        } else {
            if ($_COOKIE['member_name'] && $_COOKIE['member_pass']) {
                if ($this->check_login($_COOKIE['member_name'], $_COOKIE['member_pass'])) {
                    return 'Hello ' . $_COOKIE['member_name'] . '! ' . $sLogoutForm;
                }
            }
            return $sLoginForm;
        }
    }

    function simple_login($sName, $sPass) {
        $this->simple_logout();

        $sMd5Password = MD5($sPass);

        $iCookieTime = time() + 24*60*60*30;
        setcookie("member_name", $sName, $iCookieTime, '/');
        $_COOKIE['member_name'] = $sName;
        setcookie("member_pass", $sMd5Password, $iCookieTime, '/');
        $_COOKIE['member_pass'] = $sMd5Password;
    }

    function simple_logout() {
        setcookie('member_name', '', time() - 96 * 3600, '/');
        setcookie('member_pass', '', time() - 96 * 3600, '/');

        unset($_COOKIE['member_name']);
        unset($_COOKIE['member_pass']);
    }

    function check_login($sName, $sPass) {
        return ($this->aExistedMembers[$sName] == $sPass);
    }
}

?>

download in package

Conclusion

I described how to make easy chat application based on PHP and MySQL. You can use this material to create own scripts into your startups. Good luck!