Do you need to build a chat service and have no time to develop the service from scratch? Calm down! There is an open-source solution to answer your problem.
In this post, we will explore tinode to solve our problem
What is Tinode?
Tinode is an open-source messaging platform written in Go. It can be used to build real-time messaging applications.
From their official site
Tinode is a free, unlimited, and flexible open source messaging platform that’s been built mobile-first.
Instant, free, global communication should be a fundamental feature of today's internet. Our aim is to enable everyone to create a high-quality chat experience outside of the walled gardens that exist today.
Getting Started
In this section, we will only explain running a tinode server with binary and docker using Linux.
Install from binaries
Before following below step, make sure our database is already running
- Download the Tinode binary on their release page . We will use v0.22.12 alldbs for Linux in this example
wget https://github.com/tinode/chat/releases/download/v0.22.12/tinode-alldbs.linux-amd64.tar.gz
- Create a new directory and extract the binary to the new directory
mkdir tinode-chat
tar -xvf tinode-alldbs.linux-amd64.tar.gz -C tinode-chat
- Set the Tinode configuration by editing a configuration file named
tinode.conf
in the same directory as the Tinode binary.
cd tinode-chat
vim tinode.conf
- Change the
use_adapter
,User
,Addr
,Passwd
, andDBName
values on the DB connection configuration section. In this example, we will use the MySQL database.
// Must be one of the adapters from the list below.
"use_adapter": "mysql",
// Configurations of individual adapters.
"adapters": {
// MySQL configuration. See https://godoc.org/github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql#Config
// for other possible options.
"mysql": {
// MySQL connection settings.
// See https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql#Config for more info
// and available fields and options.
"User": "db_username",
"Net": "tcp",
"Addr": "db_host",
"Passwd": "db_password",
"DBName": "db_name",
// The 'collation=utf8mb4_unicode_ci' is optional but highly recommended for
// emoji and certain CJK characters.
"Collation": "utf8mb4_unicode_ci",
// Parse time values to time.Time. Required.
"ParseTime": true,
- Run the database initializer
init-db
./init-db
Output example
2024/03/14 04:23:49 Database adapter: 'mysql'; version: 113
2024/03/14 04:23:49 Database not found. Creating.
2024/03/14 04:23:59 Database successfully created.
2024/03/14 04:23:59 No data provided, stopping
2024/03/14 04:23:59 All done.
If we want to generate user data when initializing the database, we can use json file to generate the data for the database. The json format example from official docs data.json. To init the database by generating data from the json file execute the below command
# This command will initialize the database and generate example users like Bob or Alice
./init-db -data=data.json
Output example while init-db with generating data from json file
2024/03/14 04:27:11 Database adapter: 'mysql'; version: 113
2024/03/14 04:27:11 Database not found. Creating.
2024/03/14 04:27:16 Database successfully created.
2024/03/14 04:27:16 Generating users...
usr;alice;usrDUuFy6DahqY;alice123
usr;bob;usr8jmNzPuC2Hk;bob123
2024/03/14 04:27:17 Generating group topics...
grp;*ABC;grpNjtGeGveyEs
grp;*ABCDEF;grp7tR9jTaFl00
grp;*BACDF;grptKswCQFaZdY
2024/03/14 04:27:17 Generating P2P subscriptions...
p2p;alice:bob;p2p8jmNzPuC2HkNS4XLoNqGpg
2024/03/14 04:27:17 Generating group subscriptions...
2024/03/14 04:27:17 Inserting messages...
2024/03/14 04:27:18 Inserting forms as tino IFHqLxWfylQ
2024/03/14 04:27:19 Sample data processing completed.
2024/03/14 04:27:19 All done.
- After the database is initialized, run the tinode server
./tinode
Once the Tinode server is started, you can access the Tinode web interface by opening a web browser and navigating to the following URL: http://localhost:6060
Login Interface
# Example User | user:password
alice:alice123
bob:bob123
eve:eve123
Congratulations! You have successfully installed the Tinode binary on your system. You can now start using Tinode as a standalone messaging server or integrate it with other applications for real-time communication. For more information on how to use Tinode, you can refer to the official documentation.
Run with docker
To save time, we will use docker compose to run the tinode server
- Create
tinode-docker
directory and create docker-compose.yml inside it
mkdir tinode-docker
cd tinode-docker
vim docker-compose.yml
Copy the below code to our docker-compose.yml
file
services:
mysql:
image: "mysql:8"
container_name: mysql
environment:
- MYSQL_ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes # Not recommended in prod
restart: always
volumes:
- db-data:/var/lib/mysql
tinode:
image: "tinode/tinode-mysql:0.22.12"
container_name: tinode
restart: on-failure
ports:
- "6060:6060"
- "16060:16060"
depends_on:
- mysql
links:
- mysql
volumes:
db-data:
- Run the tinode server
docker compose up
Taraa!! Our messaging server is ready to use
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