Developing a Multi-Purpose Chat Application for Mobile Distributed Systems on Android Platform

The objective of this project was to design and implement a multi-purpose chat application for mobile distributed systems, which support both instant messaging and file sharing. The chat application is based on peer-to-peer network, which means there is no need for central server for peers to meet and talk. Besides supporting real-time messaging and file sharing, multi-purpose chat application also supports downloading files from the remote web server, and saving the image in the local secure digital card (SD card). The application client side implementation was done on Eclipse IDE with Android Development Tools (ADT) plugin using Java language and the peerdroid library. A rendezvous peer (a gathering point for peers connected on the JXTA network) was also implemented on Netbeans IDE using Java language. The results obtained in this project show that it is possible for multiple peers connected on the JXTA network to communicate in real-time manner and share resources with one another. Also users of a multi-purpose chat application were able to download images from the remote web server and save them on an SD card for future sharing with other peers on the network