In Summer 2016 I was working on a project, an Application which can send messages and files to other computers on a LAN (Just like IPMessenger). I'm not that creative in naming a project, So what better than IPConnect.
I was new to Qt as well as Software Development, so IPConnect's code structure was a disaster. It was a working application but not complete. No User notification, Bad Gui , No Download Manager to show downloads and their progress only way to see if a download is happening is to look at the terminal. I stopped working on this project.
I learned a lot over the year, and was working to fix bugs on kdev-php a Php Language Plugin for KDevelop due to which I learned about Software Development and SOLID Principles, so this summer I thought to make IPConnect from scratch with a new and better Code Base and GUI.
Here is a glimpse of IPConnect Version 2
What's new in Version 2 ?
- GUI
- Download Manager
- Settings View
- Encryption
Version 2 has New User Interface made with Qt Quick based on Flat Design.
Download Manager View provides User with option to accept or reject a transfer and show it's progress.
User can change default settings using Settings View ex: user name , color theme, etc.
IPConnect uses RSA 2048 bit and AES 256 bit encryption for sending messages or files.
How does IPConnect work ?
Project can be further broken into two libraries IPConnect and IPConnectUi. IPConnect implements all the buiseness logic and IPConnectUi uses IPConnect to implement GUI for App.
At it's core,
IPConnect listens for Connection on port 2423 (for Transfers) and 2424 (for Clients). When a new connection is available say on port 2424 IPConnect knows that a Client is connecting for sharing information and messages and if a connection is made on port 2423 it resolves to a Transfer request.
Connection is made secure by sharing RSA public keys.
IPConnect has it's own protocol for talking to another IPConnect instance running on other machine. Messages are sent in JSON format which is encrypted before sending. A Message without encryption looks like
{
"DATA": {
"FILENAME": "ipconnect-api-doc.pdf",
"FILESIZE": "225689",
"USERNAME": "Aviato"
},
"METHOD": 2,
"OPTION": 4
}
Message above is a File Request i.e. some user "Aviato" is sending a file "ipconnect-api-doc.pdf" of size 225689 Bytes. Message is parsed and appropriate action is taken, in this case notifying user that a file request is pending.
