Introduction
And why not, how to create an easy chat room for your web site? Well, the best way is to use a nice database to store messages; however, for demo purposes, I'll use a static array. I know, you won't be able to use it in your web farm. Take this article as the concept, not as a solution. This simple web chat program is intended to work in any browser supporting <iFrame>
.
Also, you can select multiple chat rooms. Why not extend from there and more from channel to channel.
Background
Some months ago, I was looking for a complete on-line customer service ASP.NET control to make my life easier, did not find anything interesting, so I built my own.
Using the code
Replace this class if you are using a database to save the messages:
public class Chat
{
static protected ArrayList pArray = new ArrayList();
static public void AddMessage(string sDealer,
string sUser, string sMsg)
{
string sAddText = sDealer + "~" + sUser + "~" + sMsg;
pArray.Add(sAddText);
if ( pArray.Count > 200 )
{
pArray.RemoveRange(0,10);
}
}
static public string GetAllMessages(string sDealer)
{
string sResponse = "";
for (int i=0; i< pArray.Count; i++)
{
sResponse = sResponse +
FormatChat(pArray[i].ToString(), sDealer);
}
return(sResponse);
}
static private string FormatChat(string sLine, string sDealer)
{
int iFirst = sLine.IndexOf("~");
int iLast = sLine.LastIndexOf("~");
string sDeal = sLine.Substring(0, iFirst);
if ( sDeal != sDealer)
return("");
string sUser = sLine.Substring(iFirst+1, iLast-(iFirst+1));
string sMsg = sLine.Substring(iLast+1);
string sRet = "" + sUser + ": " + sMsg + "";
return(sRet);
}
}
The above code reads and writes from the static array like in a database. The code only allows having 200 messages in the array, after that it deletes the top 10 at the time.
The Chat page is pretty simple; this is the code behind aspx.cs:
public class ChatWin : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected System.Web.UI.WebControls.TextBox TB_ToSend;
protected System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button BT_Send;
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
if ( Page.IsPostBack == false )
{
if ( Request.Params["Channel"] != null )
Session["ChatChannel"] =
Request.Params["Channel"].ToString();
else
Session["ChatChannel"] = "1";
}
}
#region Web Form Designer generated code
override protected void OnInit(EventArgs e)
{
InitializeComponent();
base.OnInit(e);
}
private void InitializeComponent()
{
this.BT_Send.Click +=
new System.EventHandler(this.BT_Send_Click);
this.Load += new System.EventHandler(this.Page_Load);
}
#endregion
public string GetChatPage()
{
return("TheChatScreenWin.aspx");
}
private void BT_Send_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
string sChannel = "";
string sUser = "";
if ( Request.Params["Channel"] != null )
sChannel = Request.Params["Channel"].ToString();
else
sChannel = "1";
if ( Request.Params["User"] != null )
sUser = Request.Params["User"].ToString();
else
{
Random pRan = new Random();
int iNum = pRan.Next(9);
sUser = "Annonymouse" + iNum;
}
if ( TB_ToSend.Text.Length > 0)
{
PageModule.Chat.AddMessage(sChannel,
sUser,
TB_ToSend.Text);
TB_ToSend.Text = "";
}
}
}
When the SEND button is clicked, it calls the function AddMessage
that adds a row into the end of the static array.
The page inside the <iframe>
tag refreshes every 4 seconds without refreshing your actual page.
Points of Interest
The magic? None, a simple request of the second page into the <iFrame>
. So, Internet Explorer takes care of everything for us to read the static array.
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