For my capstone project for Web Development, I combined the various front-end and back-end techniques I've learned over the course to produce a modern, database-backed single-page application called Belay. Belay behaves similarly to Slack but is significantly smaller in scope.
- Belay lets users send and read real-time chat messages that are organized into rooms called Channels. Users see a list of all the channels on the server and can click one to enter that channel. Inside, they see all the messages posted to that channel by any user, and can post their own messages. All messages belong to a channel and all channels are visible to all users; we don't need to implement private rooms or direct messages.
- Any user can create a new channel by supplying a display name. Channel names must be unique.
- Like Slack, messages may be threaded as Replies in response to a message in a channel. Messages in the channel will display how many replies they have if that number is greater than zero. We don't support nested threads; messages either belong directly to a channel or are replies in a thread to a message that does, but replies can't have nested replies of their own.
db: contains the SQL files to initialize the database
static: contains the JavaScript files with React components, HTML file
to display the web application, and the CSS file
app.py: contains the Flask app
requirements.txt: contains the package requirements to run this project
I am currently working on making the React components more dynamic using
switch statements and adding more functionality for users. I'm
also working on the CSS portion to make the front end more intuitive
and visually appealing.