discourse/message_bus
Message Bus
Message Bus is a messaging library for Ruby and Rack applications designed to facilitate real-time data broadcasting and inter-process communication. It provides a framework for pushing live updates to connected clients and synchronizing state across multiple application instances, ensuring consistent data delivery in scaled environments.
The library distinguishes itself through a flexible architecture that supports multiple storage backends, including Redis, PostgreSQL, and in-memory options. It functions as a persistent connection framework that serves as an alternative to traditional web sockets, utilizing a long-polling transport layer to maintain communication channels. Developers can implement granular control over data flow through middleware-based filtering, which allows for the interception and restriction of messages based on content, metadata, or user identity.
Beyond basic messaging, the library includes tools for distributed system coordination, such as propagating cache invalidations and managing message queues. It supports pluggable serialization strategies and data encoding configurations, enabling optimization of transmission speed and payload size for high-volume traffic. The library integrates directly into the Rack request cycle to provide event-driven updates and targeted message distribution via channel-based routing.
