GoChat - A Distributed IM System 🚀

GoChat is a high-performance distributed instant messaging system built with Go, featuring a microservices architecture and custom RPC framework.

Architecture Overview 🏗️

System Components

1. Gateway Server 🌐

   • Handles TCP connections and message routing
   • Uses epoll for high-performance I/O
   • Manages connection lifecycle
   • Communicates with State Server via gRPC

2. State Server 💾

   • Manages user session state
   • Handles message persistence
   • Coordinates between Gateway and IPConf

3. IPConf Server 🔧

   • Service discovery and configuration
   • Load balancing
   • Service health monitoring

4. Custom RPC Framework (CRPC) ⚡

   • Built on top of gRPC
   • Service discovery integration
   • Load balancing support
   • Tracing and metrics

Architecture Diagrams

Gateway and State-Server Communication

IPConf Service Discovery

Features ✨

• High-performance TCP connection handling with epoll
• Custom RPC framework for service communication
• Service discovery and load balancing
• Distributed architecture
• Real-time message delivery
• Session state management
• Metrics and tracing support

Prerequisites 📋

• Go 1.22 or higher
• Protocol Buffers compiler
• Docker (for Redis and etcd services)
• Make

Quick Start 🚀

1. Start External Services

We provide a script to start all required external services (etcd and Redis):

chmod +x scripts/start-services.sh

./scripts/start-services.sh

2. Build and Run

# Build all components
make all

# Start services in different process
./bin/gochat state
./bin/gochat gateway
./bin/gochat ipconf
./bin/gochat client

3. Verify Services

You can verify the services are running correctly:

# Check etcd
curl http://localhost:2379/version

# Check Redis
redis-cli ping

Future Plans

Phase 1: Core Features

• User authentication and authorization
• Message persistence with Redis
• Group chat functionality
• Message delivery status

Phase 2: Advanced Features

• File transfer support
• Voice messages
• Message encryption
• User presence system

Phase 3: Scalability

• Horizontal scaling support
• Message queue integration
• Cache layer implementation
• Performance optimization

Contributing 🤝

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License 📄

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.