Creating an internet chat program

[AnthonyArde]

Hi, i`m looking into creating an internet chat program, similar to windows messenger, how would i go about doing this, i have a dedicated server (if needed) basically i require a private and public messaging system. is winsock only for regular networks?
Thanks
Anthony

[Atheist]

See the link in my signature. It'll give you a good start.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Probably the link to the TCP client/server connection, I would assume. heheehe

[Divine]

If you're using Vista and VS 08, you can use the C4F Vista P2P Toolkit. It's pretty awesome (despite the fact that it's Vista-only), and making a chat program is much easier.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/sam...p/Default.aspx

I think there's someway to get it to work on XP though you'll need to download some third-party files because it works on my XP computer and I remember I downloaded a DLL or something, but can't recall what and where it is.

But personally I like coding things out myself and that's the fun in programming (getting errors is fun, too...sometimes).

[bmahler]

Moeur posted a great example that included file transfer in the codebank I used it as the basis of a program that i wrote for transfering data from my server to multiple clients and it works very well. http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=390875

One thing with creating a chat program is that you are going to need a server to tunnell your messages through to avoid forcing the users to create firewall rules in their routers to let your program through. With a server tunnel you can open the connection from the client to the server on both ends and then tunnel the messages through the server.