• Complete details of the server architecture:

  • Implemented Actors:

    • UserHandler - server actor that's handling login messages and creating "RemoteUser" actors.
    • ChannelHandler - server actor that's creating Channels.
    • Channel - an actor that represent Channel, handles all messages that should be route to all the users in the channel such as: user left, user joined, user got kicked, user got banned, disband and channel messages.
    • RemoteUser - represents a user in the server, only used for forwarding messages to its parallel LocalUser. Required for keeping a unique name for each user, and make it easier to find a user on the server.
    • LocalUser - the user actor handling all the messages that come from the server, channel and other users. such as: login success, private messages, channel titles, user left, join, kicked, banned etc. also handling the UI.

  • Implemented Message types:

    • BanMessage - Used for telling a user that he got banned from a channel.
    • BannedMessage - Used by the channel to tell all its members that someone got banned.
    • KickMessage - Used for telling a user that he got kicked from a channel.
    • KickedMessage - Used by the channel to tell all its members that someone got kicked.
    • JoinMessage - Used for telling a channel that a user wishes to join / tell the ChannelHandler that he need to create a new channel.
    • JoinedMessage - Used by the channel to tell all is members that someone joined the channel.
    • LeftMessage - Used by a channel to tell all its members that someone left the channel.
    • TitleMessage - Used for changing a channel title.
    • ChannelMessage - Used for sending a message to the channel chat.
    • PrivateMessage - Used for sending a private message to a user.
    • RequestNameMessage - Used for asking a channel for its user list (ui handling message) also used by the channel to ask members for their names.
    • UserNameMessage - Used for sending user name to the requesting user.
    • ChangeModeMessage - Used for promoting/demoting a user in a specific channel.
    • LoginMessage - Used for login to the server (register a user name).
    • enum Messages:
      • LEAVE - Used for telling a channel that a user wishes to leave.
      • LOGINSUCC - Used by the server to notify a user that his login succeeded.
      • USERLIST - Used for requesting all the user names from a channel (ui handling message).
      • CHAN - Used for requesting all the channel names from the ChannelHandler (ui handling message).
      • BECOMEOWNER - used for alerting a user that he is now the owner of a channel.
      • DISBAND - used for disbanding a channel.

  • Communication between Actors:

    • Communication between users such as: Ban, Kick and Private messages flows directly between users.
    • Communication from user to channel used only when routing is needed
    • The UserHandler used only for creating user actor for each client.
    • The ChannelHandler is used to creating new channels if the channel doesn't exists, otherwise the join message goes directly to the channel.
    • Requesting names: the UI maintains a user list for each channel and a channel list (sent when requested) to do so we use a requesting name system as following: when a user wishes to retrieve the channel list he send a request to the channelHandler he then passes the request (by routing) to all his routees(channels), then the channels sends their names directly to the requesting user. same mechanism work when a user wishes to retrieve a user list of a channel.

  • Routers used:

    • Channel - the channel actor is a router used for routing messages to all his users (as explained above).
    • ChannelHandler - routing only for requesting channel names for ui purpose (as explained above).