Chapter 4. Kivy Networking

Previously, we talked about trade-offs such as narrowing the application compatibility while aiming to broaden its feature set, for example, an Android-only application using the native API to do the heavy lifting. Now, let's explore the opposite extreme and build an app based on uncompromising, universally available functionality—networking.

In this chapter, we are going to build a Chat app, which is similar in concept to an Internet Relay Chat (IRC), but much simpler.

While certainly not a replacement for enterprise-scale behemoths like Skype, by the end of this chapter, our little app will support multi-user messaging over the Internet. This is sufficient for small and friendly groups of people.

Being friendly is actually a requirement, as we're intentionally simplifying things by not implementing authentication. This means that users are able to easily impersonate each other. Tweaking the application to sustain hostile environments...