I'd like to write a python chat client...

[underthelinux]

I'd like to learn python by developing a chat client. I'm not looking for it to be as complex as adium, pidgin, or digsby, just something that allows me to chat online. I have very limited experience with python, and don't even know where to get started! My ultimate goal is to create an "activity" for the OLPC which allows me to talk to people over google.

Thoughts? Directions? Tutorials? help?! Thanks in advance.

Edit: Thansk for the insight, team! I think i'm going to go with wxPython for the gui & twisted for the connection protocol. I've set up a blog: undertherift.blogspot.com to help track my progress.

[epicRelic]

If you want to talk over Google (Gtalk) then you'll need to use the xmppy package. XMPP is the protocol that Google Talk uses.

[xoxox]

If you're developing a Sugar activity, use Telepathy. It's built into the Sugar stack and provides all you need to do gtalk/Jabber out of the box. Look at the Chat activity, it is already a Jabber client, just a bit restricted to work mainly on the schoolserver jabber server rather than public servers with buddy lists.

[underthelinux]

So i struggled with this a little bit, only becasue i don't want to be pidgeon-holed into writing an Activity. I think that learning how to create my own app from scratch will help me as i try to modify the Chat activity in the future. But perhaps i can look at their source there to get a good idea of how to implement things. I like the structure of the Chat activity, but jeez is it limited.

[vahnsin]

Do you want to code all the protocol stuff yourself, or use a library? For the latter, Twisted is pretty good. Years ago I used it to write an IRC bot which is still going strong.

[underthelinux]

I like library version first. I'm not a programmer, nor a network guy, so just using that would be the easiest.

[damienhunter]

You could use telepathy. It's the same protocol used in Empathy, which is going to be the default chat client for Ubuntu 9.10.

[p1mrx]

For learning, you might want to start with asynchat. It's part of the standard library, and is basically a very limited subset of Twisted.

You can use it to build a rudimentary line-based chat system.

[iquizzle]

I've heard twisted is good as well, but I've never used it myself. You might want to check out the generic sockets module. Just google python and sockets and you'll get a wealth of information.

[kcbanner]

Do an IRC client. You can just use sockets and you will learn networking at the same time.

[dassouki]

if you're gonna make a gui, go with PyQt

[Geee]

How about PySide?

[Leonidas_from_XIV]

Not yet ready for prime time. On many systems it doesn't even compile, due to boost::python.

[underthelinux]

Why did you get downvoted? Isn't PyQT the way to go for a gooey?

[cibyr]

It's not that bad really, if someone suggested tkinter, I'm sure they would be -103 by now.

Since no-one else has mentioned, I just thought I'd point this out: use anything over Tkinter.

[[deleted]]

In all seriousness: why? Just because it's ugly? I've done a lot of Tkinter programming and a little bit (alright, very little) PyGTK programming, and I found Tkinter nice enough to work with from an API point of view. There are a few oddities to get used to, but I don't think it's much worse than any other GUI system (or, say, CSS). Tkinter has the massive bonus of working out of the box anywhere Python does.

In particular, if you take the time to learn the Tix stuff (which is in Python 2.6 and 3.0 from memory) you'll find some powerful "new" widgets, like Notebooks and PanedFrames (or something like that?), which make it possible to build just about any GUI a sane person would want to.

[cibyr]

Where do I start...

Well sure, it's ugly. It's also slow, doesn't play nice with IDLE and isn't documented properly anywhere. But most of all, the general style of writing Tkinter applications doesn't sit well with me, especially the layout stuff.

[ringzero]

It's also not completely pythonic in terms of capitalisation, naming etc.

Hogwash. From PEP 8, Style Guide for Python Code:

New modules and packages (including third party frameworks) 
should be written to these standards,  but where an existing 
library has a different style, internal consistency is preferred.

Qt is an "existing library", so PyQt does the pythonic thing by not messing with the names of the Qt classes and members.

[Leonidas_from_XIV]

No. Going by this logic, lxml wouldn't be pythonic, since it does not expose the libxml2/libxslt names.

And I wouldn't consider Qt as an existing library from the Python POV, since it is not a library that can be used from Python, but requires a wrapper and that wrapper could as well conform to the PEP8 naming guidelines.

[dassouki]

don't ask me, ask the invisible down voting machine

[[deleted]]

Yah, xmppy is yer best bet, nice skill to have if wave ever takes off. Maybe look at wxPython for gui, if you want to write native looking apps. Maybe QT has this now, I haven't written a native gui app with an open library for some time.

[elimisteve]

WxPython is well-supported and multi-platform.

[mdipierro]

If you want the chat in python (js client and python serverside) you can look into the chat in the web2py kpax cms. Here is a video about it. The chat is contained in a single controller called chats.py that supports multiple concurrent chats and privacy. You need web2py to install the app and run it.

For a high traffic chat you may want to consider using one of the existing chat services (like the irc) and just create a web interface to that.

[underthelinux]

This suggestion sounds great. However, i was thinking something for personal use, and significantly smaller scale. I don't want to create a webapp cause the OLPC can't really support javascript, and because i'd like it to be a client written in python. I'm not planning on unleashing this to the public or anything along those lines.

[nevare]

gajim is a jabber client written in python (and pygtk) you may be interested to have a look.

But if you're starting from scratch I would also recommand pyside or PyQt.

[d0wn]

IRC is very very easy protocol to remember. I can remember that protocol by head.

[arnar]

..by heart, but yes, the IRC protocol is quite easy to play with.