How to make online chat on python

Learn how to make an online chat using Python with an example code. See how it's done step-by-step!

Creating an Online Chat App with Python

Creating an online chat app with Python is a great way to get started with developing a chatbot or messaging app. Python has a wide range of libraries and frameworks that make it easy to create a chatbot or messaging app. In this tutorial, we’ll be using the Flask web framework to create a simple chatbot with Python.

First, we’ll need to install Flask. You can do this using the pip command. Open up a terminal window and type in the following command:

pip install Flask

This will install Flask into your environment. Now, create a file called app.py. This will contain the code for our chatbot. We’ll start by importing the necessary modules:

from flask import Flask, request
import json

The first line imports the Flask module. The second line imports the json module, which we’ll use to parse incoming messages. Now, let’s create our Flask app:

app = Flask(__name__)

This creates a Flask object called app. Next, we’ll create a route for our chatbot. This is the URL that users will use to access the chatbot. We’ll call it “/chat”:

@app.route('/chat', methods=['POST'])
def chat():
    # Our chatbot code will go here
    return "Chatbot response"

This creates a route called “/chat” that will accept POST requests. Now, we can add our chatbot code inside the chat() function. We’ll start by parsing the incoming message:

@app.route('/chat', methods=['POST'])
def chat():
    # Get the message from the request
    data = json.loads(request.data)
    message = data['message']
    # Our chatbot code will go here
    return "Chatbot response"

This parses the incoming JSON data and stores the message in the message variable. Now, we can create our chatbot logic. For this tutorial, we’ll create a simple chatbot that responds to certain keywords. We’ll create a dictionary that stores the keywords and responses:

@app.route('/chat', methods=['POST'])
def chat():
    # Get the message from the request
    data = json.loads(request.data)
    message = data['message']
    
    # Create a dictionary of responses
    responses = {
        'hello': 'Hi there!',
        'bye': 'Goodbye!'
    }
    
    # Check if the message is in the responses
    if message in responses:
        # Return the matching response
        return responses[message]
    # Return a default response
    return "I don't understand what you're saying."

This creates a dictionary of responses and checks if the incoming message is in the dictionary. If it is, it returns the matching response. Otherwise, it returns a default response. Now, we can run our Flask app:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

This runs the Flask app with debug mode enabled. Now, we can send POST requests to our chatbot endpoint. We can do this using curl:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"message": "hello"}' http://localhost:5000/chat

This will send a POST request with the message “hello” to our chatbot endpoint. The chatbot will return the response “Hi there!”. And that’s it! You now have a basic chatbot app running with Python.