PHP chat

[yoda]

I want a live chat system on one of my sites.
I've looked at some free ones and I havn't seen any I like...

so, I'm starting to design my own and I needs some advice on a couple of things...

1) the 'logon' into the chat system I want to come from the PHPBB2 thats allready installed. so basically, it pulls the user name and password from the PHPBB2 database. The problem is the passwords are encoded in the table. I can't seem to figure out how they encode them, does anyone know?

2) I've decided to use a frameset for the chat window. the 'main' window is where all the messages are going and Im using a JS refresh script to refresh the frame. The problem is, if the user changes room how do I get the new variable into the code for the 'main' window? does PHP treat each from as a seperate session so that I can't just set a session variable? the other way is to reload the 'main' frame and pass it a http var... any ideas?


Thanks

 

[Augmented]

1) the 'logon' into the chat system I want to come from the PHPBB2 thats allready installed. so basically, it pulls the user name and password from the PHPBB2 database. The problem is the passwords are encoded in the table. I can't seem to figure out how they encode them, does anyone know?

They'll be hashed e.g. with MD5, and possibly salted (a hash of the password + a unique string). However, you shouldn't need to concern yourself with the mechanism. Simply use the authentication functions already exisiting in PHPBB - there should be a login function that takes a username and password and returns true or false depending on success.

 

[Jaffa_Cake]

Like mine http://jaf.richieward.com/ajax/ ?

Combination of Ajax and PHP, made it when i was learning Ajax.