JavaScript how to make a chat

Create a real-time chatroom with Javascript & Firebase! Follow this easy tutorial for a step-by-step guide to building a chat app.

Creating a Chat using JavaScript

Creating a chat application using JavaScript is a relatively simple task. In this tutorial, we will go through the steps needed to create a basic chat application. We will be using the popular jQuery library to make our application easier to build.

The first step is to create an HTML page with a text input field, a button and a div to display the messages. We will also add a style sheet to make the page look nicer. The HTML code for this page will look like this:


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Chat Application</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
    <div id="chat"></div>
    <form>
        <input type="text" id="message">
        <button type="submit">Send</button>
    </form>
    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script src="chat.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Next, we need to create a style sheet to make the page look nicer. We will use some basic CSS to set the font size and color, add a border to the chat div and give the input field a width. The style sheet code should look like this:


body {
    font-family: sans-serif;
    font-size: 16px;
    color: #444;
}

#chat {
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
    padding: 10px;
    margin-bottom: 10px;
}

input {
    width: 300px;
}

Finally, we need to add some JavaScript to make the chat application work. We will use jQuery to listen for the form submit event, get the message from the input field and add it to the chat div. We will also clear the input field after the message is sent. The JavaScript code should look like this:


$(function(){
    $('form').submit(function(){
        var message = $('#message').val();
        $('#chat').append('<div>' + message + '</div>');
        $('#message').val('');
        return false;
    });
});

That's it! With just a few lines of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you have created a basic chat application. You can now add more features such as displaying the username of the person sending the message and saving the messages to a database so they are not lost when the page is refreshed.

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