Python Django chat app tutorial

This article was originally published on the DeadSimpleChat Blog: https://deadsimplechat.com/blog/python-django-chat-app-tutorial/

In this article we are going to learn how to build a Django chat app. We a going to scaffold a new project from scratch and build our way to a complete chat application

Prerequisites

Basic Knowledge of Django and python
Some HTML and CSS

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Step 1 : Scaffolding

let us scaffold a new app with Django and python. We first need to chech whether we have the latest version of Django installed. Type the below command to check the version of Django installed on your system

$ python -m django --version

check Django version

If you do not have Django installed then you need python 3.8 upwords and you can type the below code to install it

python -m pip install Django

install Django

Creating a project

From the command line run the below command to scaffold a new project.

django-admin startproject mysite

mysite new project

Now open the code in your favorite editor. I am using vscode. let us look at the files the startproject has created for us.

mysite: is the root directory that contains all your project files

manage.py A command line utility that lets you interact with the Djanfo project in various projects.

mysite/__init__.py An empty file that tells python that this directory should be considered a Python project.

Getting the development server started

type the below command to get the developmernt server started.

python manage.py runserver

You will see the output on the command line itself

Watching for file changes with StatReloader
Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
December 26, 2022 - 19:40:13
Django version 4.0.3, using settings 'mysite.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

starting the server

If you want to change the port where the server is running then type the below command

python manage.py runserver 8080 (port number where you want the server to run)

Now let us open the url in the browser and see what is rendering at that url.

You will see that a new page has come up with the text written like the install worked successfully! Congratulations!

refer to the image below for details

The Django development server is a lightweight server written in python.

Now let us create an app for our chat and let us name it chat app

type the below code to create a python app

$ python manage.py startapp chat

The chat directory will automatically be created by the Django

the chat directory will look like this

chat/
    __init__.py
    admin.py
    apps.py
    migrations/
        __init__.py
    models.py
    tests.py
    views.py

Chat directory

Now, open the chat/views.py file and type the below code

from django.http import HttpResponse


def index(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello, world. You're at the Chat index.")

views.py

We also need to create a URL.conf in the chat directory, create a file called urls.py and paste the below code there

from django.urls import path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
]

urls.py

The next step is to point the root URLconf at the chat.urls module. In mysite/urls.py, add an import for django.urls.include and insert an include() in the urlpatterns list, the complete code looks like this

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path('chat/', include('polls.urls')),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

mysite/urls.py

Now let us go to the url where the server is running and go to /chat and see what we have

Step 2: Getting a Chat provider

We need a chat provider to add chat to our Django app. go to DeadSimpleChat.com

There click on the Get Started button to create a free account and then you will land up in the Dashboard section

Click on the Get Started button to create a free account

Click on the Create Chat Room button to create a new chat room

Click on the save button to create a new chat room

Click on the Save button to save the chat room

Click on the embed info button to get the Embed information

Copy the embed code, it is an iframe code that we will use to add chat to our Django App

We will need the code in our next step

Step 3: Adding the Chat to the Django App

Now let us go to our file chat/views.py here replace the code there with the below code

from django.shortcuts import render

# Create your views here.
from django.http import HttpResponse


def index(request):
    return HttpResponse('<h1>Django and Python Chat App</h1><iframe src="https://deadsimplechat.com/CGOC0byXC" width="100%" height="600px"></iframe>')

chat/views.py

Here we are adding a h1 tag that says Django and Python chat app and adding the iframe chat code that we copied in the previous step

let us visit the server url once again and see what's happening there

go to localhost:8000/chat

and we have created the Django python chat app.

Bonus: Using Chat APIs and SDK

You can control every aspect of the chat using the Chat APIS and JavaScript SDK

So, we have different Chat SDK and API

Methods
Events
Webhooks
SSO Single Sign On

Methods : Using Methods you can perform certain actions in the chat room like for example:

logging in user to the chat room
logging out the user from the chat room
Sending a message in the chat room.
Banning users from the chat room
Deleting messages from the chat room

You can also create moderators and they can also moderate the chat rooms that are assigned to them

Events : Events are triggered when something happens in the chat room. For example:

message : message event is triggered when a message is sent in the chat room
messageHistory : When a new user joins a chat this event is triggered it contains the last 18 messages of the user
messageDeleted : Whenever a message is deleted from the chat room this event is triggered
messageLiked: Whenever a message is liked in the chat room this event is triggered.

Using events you can integrate the chat into your app or website. You can trigger specific functionality when some event is triggered.

For example: You can start a video when a message is sent in the chat room and things like that

You can use the SDK Methods to trigger the functionality to make it possible

APIs : We have specific APIs for specific purposes like

Chat Room API: All about Chat room, like get-all-chat-rooms, get-a-chat-room, delete-chat-room-messages, post-create-a-chat-room, update-a-chat-room, turn-off-chat etc
Channels API : Channels are chat room inside of chat rooms, all the apis available for the chat rooms are also available for the channels
Presence API : Presence API lets you know how many users are present in the chat room at any point in time.
User and Moderator API : User and Moderator api lets you create and update Users and Moderators and also let's you assign moderators to specific chat rooms. You can also validate and invalidate access tokens using the user and moderator API.
Messages API : Messages API lets you send messages in specific chat rooms or channels as you want to
Export API : With the help of export API you can export the messages and files of any chat room.

Webhooks :

Webhooks will send a HTTP POST request to any url that you specify, when something happens in the chat room

There are webhooks for all sorts of events like: a new message is sent in the chat room, User joined in the chat room, user left the chat room etc

for a complete list visit the developer documentation

Single Sign On

With Single Sign you can automatically login the users that are on your website or app to chat

There are two types of SSO available

Basic SSO
Advanced SSO

Basic SSO : Basic SSO is easy to implement, does not require coding knowledge, but is not as secure as Advanced SSO. Also you cannot login moderators with the help of Basic SSO. learn more about Basic SSO

Advanced Single Sign On : Advanced SSO is more secure with the help of accessToken, but does require a bit of coding knowledge. You can also login moderators along with normal users with the help of Advanced SSO in the chat room. learn more about Advanced SSO

Bonus: Customizing the chat application

You can easily customize the look of the chat to pixel perfection. Go to DeadSimpleChat.com and login to your account

then go to Dashboard -> Chat rooms -> Select the chat room that you want to customize

Then go to edit and customize section of the chat room there you will see our UI based customization tool

you can also write your oun custom css with our custom css section and class guide.

All the customizations can also easily be copied to other chat rooms as well using the Copy Customization tool

You can also customize the chat room using Chat API and Chat SDK.

Useful Links

This article is about building a chat app with Django and Python, but if you are interested in other technologies as well we have

Angular Chat Application tutorial
React Native Chat Application tutorial
React Js Chat Application tutorial
Angular Chat with Socket.io and Node Js Tutorial
Vue Js Chat Application tutorial

Conclusion

Here we have created a complete chat application with Django and python. Let us know if you liked the article on support [at] deadsimplechat.com

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