telegram-clone-py

A Clone of Telegram written from the ground up, with a goal of security. Split into frontend and backend

Purpose

This Telegram clone is written in Python for a computer science course at Ohio State University, CSE 3461. The purpose of this clone is to satisfy the requirements of that lab.

• Server and Client communicate via TCP
• Server must respond to a minimum of 5 different commands
• configuration file for port the server will listen on
• Server startup message
• Either prompt or use a configuration file to allow client to pick which server to connect to and port
• Server and Client work from 2 different IP addresses

Assignment	Points
Software submission	75
Demonstration / Review meeting	25
Bonus Client-side GUI	+2
Bonus User Authorization	+2
Bonus Server-side command logging	+1
Total	105

Choices

Language: Python Platform: Agnostic, but favoring Linux/Unix, depends on GUI library choice

Database Planning

Goals

Server

• Built on top of a custom implementation of a Web App Framework similar to Flask*
• Server follows REST principles
• Utilize Sqlite3 as the DBMS
• Verifiy Users Email addresses
• Utilize Python-RSA to maintain end to end encryption of messages
• Follow best practices for security
• Use websockets to send and recieve messages from client

Web App Framework documentation

Client

• Utilize PyQT for GUI
• Built on top of a custom implementation of HTTP Requests similar to Requests*
• Utilize Python-RSA to maintain end to end encryption of messages
• Behave and look similarly to Telegram-desktop
• Allow Markdown in chat messages Unfinished
• Allow emoji in chat messages along with an emoji selector menu Unfinished

HTTP Request Library documentation

* Objectively WORSE

Install

Dependencies

• Python 3.8
• pip
• pipenv

Frontend

cd frontend/
pipenv install
pipenv shell
cd ../
python -m frontend

Backend

cd backend/
pipenv install
pipenv shell
cd ../
python -m backend

Screenshots

Connect to server screen

Create Account

Login

Server

Main Screen

Future objectives

• Switch form polling the server every so many seconds to websockets
  1. Switch to websockets circumvents all the hacky refreshing
• Add Markdown support
• Add emoji menu
• refractor Qt mess
  1. Code generated by Qt Designer isn't pythonic and has massive issues
• Testing
• Implement settings window
  1. allow updating account (server side already supports)
  2. allow deleting account (server side already supports)
  3. allow resending email verification
• Fix sending email verification (for some reason doesn't work with Gmail)

Takeaways

• Writing abstractions for the backend and learning how HTTP Requests work and are processed was incredibly interesting
• GUI design and layout was tedious, difficult, and the most time consuming

Thanks

All Icons are from Icons8

License

GPLv3