Overview

channeld is an open source, light-weight and efficient messaging gateway server designed for distributed game servers (typically MMO) and other backend applications that require real-time, subscription-based user interaction with high concurrency (e.g. instance messenger server).

Key features:

• Protobuf-based binary protocol over TCP, KCP or WebSocket
• Backend servers load-balancing with auto-scaling
• FSM-based message filtering
• Fanout-based data pub/sub of any type defined with Protobuf
• Area of interest management based on channel and data pub/sub

Performance

channeld is aimmed to support 10Ks connections and 100Ks pps(packets per second) on a single node (uplink + downlink), and 10Ms pps in a distributed system.

Roadmap

There is a dedicated roadmap documentation.

The requirements of the real-life projects will decide the priority of the development.

Getting Started

1. Clone the source code

2. Docker

The fastest way to run the server is with Docker Compose.

There's a docker-compose file set up for running the chat rooms demo. Navigate to the root of the repo and run the command:

docker-compose up -d

3. The chat rooms demo

After starting the server, browse to http://localhost:8080.

Use the input box at the bottom to send messages, to the GLOBAL channel by default. The input box can also be used to send commands, which are started with '/'. The supported commands are:

• list [typeFilter] [metadataFilter1],[metadataFilter2],... // the result format is Channel(<ChannelTypeName> <ChannelId>)
• create <channelType> <metadata> // the channelType is an integer. See the ChannelType enum value defined in the proto file
• remove <channelId> // only the channel creator has the permission to remove the channel.
• sub <channelId> // subscribe to the channel
• unsub <channelId> // unsubscribe from the channel
• switch <channelId> // switch the active channel. Only the active channel displays the new chat messages.