darkfi/doc/src/learn/dchat/creating-dchat/sending-messages.md

Sending messages

The core of our application has been built. All that's left is to add a UI that takes user input, creates a DchatMsg and sends it over the network.

Let's start by creating a send() function inside Dchat. This will introduce us to a new p2p method that is essential to our chat app: p2p.broadcast().

{{#include ../../../../../example/dchat/src/main.rs:116:120}}

We pass a String called msg that will be taken from user input. We use this input to initialize a message of the type DchatMsg that the network can now support. Finally, we pass the message into p2p.broadcast().

Here's what happens under the hood:

{{#include ../../../../../src/net/p2p.rs:191:196}}

This is pretty straightforward: broadcast() takes a generic Message type and sends it across all the channels that our node has access to.

All that's left to do is to create a UI.