Creating a chat application is not a difficult task. Honest!

This tutorial is a step by step introduction to creating a lightweight chat application using XML as a storage medium. As personal motivation, I develop PHP games as a hobby. In pursuit of that hobby I’ve found that offering a flat threadless forum in such games tends to result in heavy usage as players attempt to use it as a chat room. The reason is that even with the advent of irc and instant messengers, users continue see an alternative web based solution as attractive for a number of reasons whether its limited access to instant messengers through a corporate proxy or simply for convenience sake.

Part 1: Introduction, The Zend Framework

Part 2:Prototype, Scriptaculous, Application HTML

Part 3:Storage Medium, XML and the Message Process

Part 4: IndexController MessageAction() and JSON Encoding

Part 5: The Javascript, Sending Chat Messages, Screen Name Changes

Part 6: Updating the User List

Part 7: Usability Improvements