Build an Instant Chat & Game Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA with Netty

Installation Experience

Open IntelliJ IDEA and navigate to

Preference > Plugins > Settings > Manage Plugin Repositories...

to add the XEChat‑Idea plugin repository (http://plugins.xeblog.cn). Search for "xechat" and install the plugin, then restart IDEA and locate the XEChat panel at the bottom right.

Feature Introduction

After the first launch, the plugin shows available commands. Log in with #login 沉默王二. You can then chat in real time and even send images via copy‑paste, though latency may be noticeable.

Start Game

Enter #showGame to list supported games (currently Gomoku and Dou Dizhu). Use #play 0 to launch the Gomoku board. You can play directly from the XEChat panel.

Deploy Server

To run your own server, clone the repository from GitHub, then execute the following Maven commands:

In the xechat-commons module run mvn install to build shared components.

In the xechat-server module run mvn package to create the jar.

Start the server with java -jar target/xechat-server-xxx.jar -p 1024. Back in IntelliJ IDEA, log in to the local server using #login -h 127.0.0.1 -p 1024.

Study Source Code

The XEChat project is a good example for learning Java SE and Netty. You can start debugging from the main method to explore the well‑structured Netty implementation.