This system simulates an electronic food marketplace with buyers and sellers. It allows multiple buyers to connect to sellers and perform various actions which are:

• buying items
• listing items and their stock
• joining a seller's stall
• leaving a seller's stall
• quiting (can't join the market again, socket gets disconnected!)
• Displaying a help menu

• This program was made using Python 3.10.0. I can't confirm this will work correctly with other versions but it most likely would.
• Windows OS (This README assumes Windows; slight modifications may be needed for other platforms)
• This program uses no external libraries, only ones part of Python's standard library.

Modify the config.ini file to configure the system. You can specify the seller and buyer IDs and also the seller host and starting port (port increment by 1 each new seller in the market).

For the demo, the config.ini file would look like this:

[Server]
host = localhost
port = 5000

[Sellers]
seller1 = 1
; seller2 = 2

[Buyers]
buyer1 = 1
buyer2 = 2
buyer3 = 3
buyer4 = 4

Run the main.py in the project root directory (same directory where this README is located)

python src/main.py

After running the main.py, separate console windows will appear for both the sellers and buyers. You can engage with each buyer individually using the CLI specific to that buyer.

It is recommended to use a console that supports ANSI colour codes for text styling.

Be aware that the main.py file is for launching the client and server instances. It assumes that "python" is the keyword for executing Python scripts on your machine; however, if your system employs "py" or "python3" etc. you may need to modify main.py accordingly.

If there’s issues with using main.py for launching the instances, then you can run the them manually in separate terminals:

python src/server.py localhost 5001 seller1 1
python src/client.py localhost "{\"seller1\": [\"1\", 5001]}" 1
python src/client.py localhost "{\"seller1\": [\"1\", 5001]}" 2
python src/client.py localhost "{\"seller1\": [\"1\", 5001]}" 3

.
├── README.md
├── config.ini
└── src
    ├── client.py
    ├── colours.py
    ├── config.py
    ├── main.py
    └── server.py