SR03 - ChatApp

Project Description

This project consists of a chat application divided into two parts:

• Part 1: Web Application
  A web interface to manage users, schedule, edit, and display chats.
  Technologies used:

  • Backend: Spring Boot (Java) with JPA/Hibernate for data management
  • User frontend: React (single-page app) with REST API calls to the backend
  • Administrator interface: HTML / Thymeleaf pages integrated directly into the Spring Boot application

• Part 2: Chat Server
  A Java WebSocket server to broadcast messages in real-time to clients connected to a channel.

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General Architecture

[React Frontend (user)]
        ⇅ REST API
[Backend Spring Boot + WebSocket Server + HTML admin interface]
        ⇅
     [PostgreSQL Database]

• The React frontend communicates with the backend via REST APIs.
• The admin interface is served by Spring Boot via HTML/Thymeleaf pages.
• The WebSocket server is integrated into the Spring Boot backend.
• Messages are not persisted: they are only broadcast to connected users.

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Technologies Used

• Java
• Spring Boot 3.x
• JPA / Hibernate
• Thymeleaf / HTML / CSS / JS (admin interface)
• React 18+ (user interface)
• WebSocket API Java
• PostgreSQL
• pnpm (package manager for the frontend)

Instructions to run the application

Prerequisites

• Java JDK 17 or higher
• Maven
• Node.js + pnpm (npm install -g pnpm)
• PostgreSQL (or another compatible DBMS)

Launching the backend (Spring Boot)

git clone
cd backend
mvnw spring-boot:run

Launching the frontend (React)

cd frontend
npm i -g pnpm
pnpm install
pnpm dev

WebSocket Server Operation

• The WebSocket server is integrated into the backend.
• It is activated automatically when Spring Boot starts.
• Messages are broadcast only live (not saved).

Authors

• Mohamed Tahiri
• Ismat Abou Khachfe