ft_irc

📌 Overview

ft_irc is a custom IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server written in C++ as part of the Hive Helsinki core curriculum. It implements the essential features of the IRC protocol — allowing multiple clients to connect, join channels, exchange private messages, and manage channels with operator privileges. While no IRC client was developed for this project, we used Irssi as a reference client to connect, test, and verify the server’s functionality.

🎯 Project Focus

This project is designed to explore key aspects of network programming and real-time communication:

• TCP socket programming
• Event-driven I/O using epoll()
• Parsing and processing text-based commands
• Managing communication between multiple concurrent clients

✨ Features

Core IRC Server Functionality

• Supports multiple simultaneous client connections (non-blocking sockets).
• Handles authentication and registration via standard IRC commands: PASS, NICK, and USER.
• Maintains active connections through continuous PING/PONG handshakes.
• Properly handles client disconnections (QUIT, signal termination, or network failure).
• Supports nickname changes with live updates to other connected users.
• Allows private messaging between users.
• Enables channel creation and group communication.

Channel Management

• Supports channel topics and topic modification.
• Manages operator privileges for channel owners.
• Implements channel modes, including:
  • Invite-only (+/-i)
  • Key-protected (+/-k)
  • Topic restriction (+/-t)
  • User limit (+l)
• Supports channel invitations and user kicks.

Logging

• Clean, informative, and color-coded server activity log for easier monitoring and debugging.

🚀 Try It Yourself

You don’t need to clone or build the project — the IRC server is already live on cloud! Just connect using IRC client(Irssi).

IRSSI Setup

macOS:

brew install irssi

Linux:

sudo apt install irssi

Server Information

Server	shahnajsc.com
Port	6667
Password	abcdef

Connect to the Server

irssi
/connect shahnajsc.com 6667 abcdef

Few Commands

Command	Description
/join #channelName	Join or create a channel
/nick newNickname	Change your nickname
/msg nickname :message	Send a private message
/msg #channelName :message	Send a message to a channel
/topic #channelName :new topic	Change a channel topic

⏳ Project Status

Submission and peer evaluation is done.

🤝 Contributors

Eetu

Hager

Shahnaj