need some help to build up a chatting application in php

sammia

hi
this is sammia,im posting my first messege.Actulay i need some guidance to make a chatting application in php using mysql so can anyone gime some kinda help to start this project
thanx
sammia

stick_figure

Wouldn't you want to do that in Java? I don't see how PHP would work for chat. Tell me if you have a way, though. That would be cool.

sammia

hey i heard that its realy ez to handle chat application in php by connecting it with mysql database but iv no idea hao to do this

cgraz

I've never done a php chat; you could probably check hotscripts.com; i'm sure they have some that you could take a look at how its done, or even search google.

But since PHP is server side, when someone types something in the chatroom, you'd have to immediately store it somehow (database) then refresh the page to display it. Possibly refresh once every second? People probably won't like much more than that.

Anythings possible (including a PHP chat), but i'd suggest looking into a java chatroom like stick_figure suggested. That's what yahoo and others use. I'm sure you can probably even download one for free. I was looking for PHP chatroom last year and tried a few demos and they weren't very good. I don't know if PHP has progressed in this area at all since then, but java is a sure bet. 😉

Cgraz

planetsim

Live chat and PHP theres no way. You can however store the chat but not actually have the chat entirely php

Java or Javascript would be the way to go. Otherwise you'd need to constantly refresh to see if there was an update. Meaning

1) Lots of Bandwidth Being Used
2) A lot of time if your host is slow to see if there was a change.

altexis

I recently found a very interesting web chat app 🙂

as <cgraz> and <planetsim> suggested it is true you have to refresh the page quite often but you can use a cool trick to do this seamlessly... you can use a frame!... not necessarily a big one. a small one using the IFRAME tag (eg. 100x200 pixels)

if the frame is that small the refresh doesn't get anyone's attention. but 1 second is too much... for a web chat... I would put something like 20seconds refresh

Now its true that web chat using php and databases can never reach the comfort of IRC.

If you are willing to check out some java applets for all this try www.jpilot.com

on the other hand.... web chat doesn't require you to know about chat rooms .. servers... or any other of the IRC stuff
you just log on to a web page and chat

planetsim

Well if you want to use IRC theres functions in PHP for it however

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.ircg.php

sammia

i visited this one but can u just breifly explain whats the benefit of using irc gateway functions and y should i prefer them and if i use them then wat will b the right way to make the whole application

suntra

It's possible !

You make a function which will look in MySQL for new messages (you assign an id to each msg and check msg with bigger id than the last), after you print all the "new" msgs, after you "sleep" for, maybe, 1 second, then you call again the function...

<?
set_time_limit(0); // DON'T FORGET IT !! If you do, you'll get a timeout error (30 sec)
$lastid = 0;
function Check_Msg() {
 // some mysql code
 while($msg = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
       echo $msg["msg"] . "<BR />\n";
       $lastid = $msg["id"];
 }
 sleep(1);
 Check_Msg();
}
Check_Msg();
?>

sammia

hey thx fer the code but i need some guidance to start up the aplication as iv no idea about chattin application in php🙁