README

CS447 FALL 2025 P1 : Online Course Registration System
======================================================
Author: Christian Downs
Date: September 27th, 2025

Overview:
  Created a simple server that allows for enrollment and exploration of classes in our local database. This uses jthreads in order to allow multiple clients. For a full description of entire project view [Protocol-Specifiactions](./Protocol-Specifiactions.pdf). This project is an expansion of [beej simple stream server](https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/html/#datagram:~:text=the%20next%20section.-,6.1%20A%20Simple%20Stream%20Server,-All%20this%20server).

Directory Structure of the Project:

Protocol-Project/:<br>
  &emsp;|- server.cpp: Starter code for the server application.<br>
  &emsp;|- Makefile: Makefile to compile the server and client applications.<br>
  &emsp;|- server.conf: Configuration file for the server (fill in the port number before running).<br>
  &emsp;|- courses.db: A sample Text-based database for testing<br>
  &emsp;|- p1_helper.h: Header file for the helper function to load courses database.<br>
  &emsp;|- p1_helper.cpp: Implementation of the helper function. Implement the stub functionality.<br>

Compilation: <br>
&emsp; Once project is downloaded into a linux server just run this in the terminal
```
  >make compile
```
&emsp; To communicate with the server you can use many services but I used [telnet](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-networks/introduction-to-telnet/)


Notes and Design Choices:<br>
<div style="padding-left: 1em">
    A big challenge I had to solve was allowing for multiple clients to run at the same time! I was able to solve this by detaching the jthreads from my main thread.<br>
    Another interesting problem was with string manipulation in c++, as there is no split so I used erase to gather all the information from the commands.
</div>