chat-app-php

A browser-based one-to-one chat application built with PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. Users can register, sign in, browse other users, and exchange messages through PHP endpoints.

✨ Features

• Signup and login forms with session-based authentication.
• User directory and user-name search.
• One-to-one message send and conversation display.
• User avatars and active-status updates in the application flow.
• chatapp.sql defines the users and messages tables.

🏗️ Architecture

PHP pages render signup, login, user-list, and conversation views. JavaScript sends AJAX requests to PHP scripts under php/; these scripts use mysqli to read or write the MySQL database. There is no separate API server or WebSocket service in this repository.

🧰 Tech stack

🚀 Getting started

1. Install PHP with the mysqli extension and MySQL or MariaDB, plus a local PHP web server (for example, XAMPP).
2. Create a database named chatapp and import chatapp.sql using phpMyAdmin or the MySQL client.
3. Review php/config.php and configure the database host, username, password, and database name. The committed values assume a local MySQL setup.
4. Serve the repository from the web server's document root and open index.php in a browser.
5. Ensure the app's image-upload directory is present and writable by PHP when testing signup with an avatar.

📁 Project structure

├── index.php / login.php / users.php  # Signup, login, user list
├── chat.php                            # Conversation page
├── php/config.php                      # Database connection
├── php/                                # AJAX and database handlers
├── javascript/                         # Browser interactions
└── chatapp.sql                         # Database schema

🗺️ Roadmap / Notes

• This is a small learning project; it has no dependency manifest, automated tests, or production deployment configuration.
• The database settings are hard-coded for a local environment and must be changed before deployment.
• The login implementation compares MD5 password hashes; MD5 is not suitable for password storage in a production application.

👤 Author

Brian Dol, Senior Full Stack Engineer · Portfolio · LinkedIn