Getting Started with Tinode: An Open-Source Messaging Server

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, and DBName 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

Logged in Interface

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