BlueBerry Chat

A practical, low-friction chat system that requires no account creation or login. Users get partial anonymity — just enter a nickname and the name of the room they want to join.

• If the room doesn't exist, it's created automatically.
• If it already exists, the full message history is retrieved for the new participant.

The goal is to provide a simple, fast and accessible communication platform while preserving participants' partial anonymity.

Features

• No sign-up or login required
• Nickname-based partial anonymity
• Real-time messaging via WebSocket
• Message deletion function
• Reply message function
• Automatic room creation
• Persistent message history per room
• Room deletion function
• image sending
• online users count
• Typing indicator
• Join notification ex:"Cartman has just joined"

Index page

Chat page

Stack

• Django Rest Framework
• Django Channels
• WebSocket
• React
• Docker
• Redis
• SQLite (Development)
• PostgreSQL (Production)
• TDD

Architecture

┌──────────────────────┐
│        React         │
│      Frontend        │
└──────────┬───────────┘
           │
      HTTP / WebSocket
           │
┌──────────▼───────────┐
│       Django         │
│                       │
│  ┌────────────────┐  │
│  │ Django REST    │  │
│  │ Framework      │  │
│  └────────────────┘  │
│                       │
│  ┌────────────────┐  │
│  │ Django Channels│  │
│  └────────────────┘  │
└───────┬───────┬───────┘
        │       │
        │       │ WebSocket
        │       │ Channel Layer
        │       ▼
        │   ┌─────────┐
        │   │  Redis  │
        │   └─────────┘
        │
        │ Persistence
        ▼
┌───────────────────┐
│    PostgreSQL     │
└───────────────────┘

Infrastructure

All infrastructure is currently hosted on free-tier services (which is why it's a bit slow 😭):

Service	Provider
Frontend & Backend	Render
Redis	Upstash
Database	Supabase

Locally, this setup is replaced by a Dockerized Redis instance and SQLite — see Installation below.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• Node.js 18+
• Docker Desktop (with WSL2 enabled, if on Windows)

Environment variables

Create a .env file inside backend/ with at least:

SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key
DEBUG=True
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379
DATABASE_URL=sqlite:///db.sqlite3

For production, REDIS_URL and DATABASE_URL should point to your Upstash and Supabase instances instead. Adjust this list to match what settings.py actually reads.

🚀 Installation (local development)

1. Start Redis first (required by Django Channels)

docker pull redis
docker run --name redis-chat -p 6379:6379 -d redis

Make sure Docker Desktop is running before this step. To confirm the container is up:

docker ps

If you already created the container before, just start it again:

docker start redis-chat

To stop it later:

docker stop redis-chat

2. Create and activate a virtual environment

python -m venv venv

Windows

venv\Scripts\activate

macOS / Linux

source venv/bin/activate

3. Install dependencies

Backend

pip install -r requirements.txt

Frontend

cd frontend
npm install

4. Apply database migrations

cd backend
python manage.py migrate

5. Run the application

Start the Django server:

cd backend
python manage.py runserver

In a new terminal, start the React app:

cd frontend
npm run dev

Optional Tools

• SQLite Viewer (VS Code extension)
• WebSocket Tester: https://hoppscotch.io/realtime/websocket

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first to discuss what you'd like to change.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

Author

Made by Rian Aguiar