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Show HN: Razorframe – A Node.js module for empowering real-time apps at scale

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Re: Show HN: Razorframe – A Node.js module for empowering real-time apps at scale

#2

Post by edshpark »

Razorframe is a Node.js library for enabling the effective backend scaling of your real-time application. Built on top of Socket.io, Razorframe’s simple server-and client-side API allows you to easily employ the task processing of multiple, parallel Node instances in conjunction with an in-memory queue.

Our team set out to deliver on pushing the impact of real-time web through maximizing backend resources provided by multi-core server systems. By allowing your Node.js server to run on multiple threads and ensuring data consistency through an evented queueing system, Razorframe makes your application’s backend more resilient and performant under duress.

We'd love to get some feedback on Razorframe and ways in which we can make it a better solution for your next Node.js project. Feel free to check us out on GitHub!

Thank you!

Re: Show HN: Razorframe – A Node.js module for empowering real-time apps at scale

#3

Post by songzme »

edshpark wrote: post #2

Razorframe is a Node.js library for enabling the effective backend scaling of your real-time application. Built on top of Socket.io, Razorframe’s simple server-and client-side API allows you to easily employ the task processing of multiple, parallel Node instances in conjunction with an in-memory queue. Our team set out to deliver on pushing the impact of real-time web through maximizing backend resources provided by…

Would this be a firebase competitor? If so, how does it compare?

Re: Show HN: Razorframe – A Node.js module for empowering real-time apps at scale

#4

Post by ianstormtaylor »

Congrats on the launch! Glad to see more people working on these kinds of problems.

As someone who hasn't built one of these systems before... What does Razorfish give you that running Socket.io as a separate microservice that talks to your existing API service over an existing message queue doesn't? Is it for people with architectures that don't have an existing queuing or API services already? Or does it handle sharding the Socket.io part easily which usually has to be vertically scaled?

(Sorry if these questions don't make sense, I haven't dug into my requirements for these things yet but I know they're coming up!)

I think a very clear explanation of that would help me (and maybe others) understand its value and how hard it would be to roll your own here.

Re: Show HN: Razorframe – A Node.js module for empowering real-time apps at scale

#5

Post by tron1k »

songzme wrote: post #3
edshpark wrote: post #2

Razorframe is a Node.js library for enabling the effective backend scaling of your real-time application. Built on top of Socket.io, Razorframe’s simple server-and client-side API allows you to easily employ the task processing of multiple, parallel Node instances in conjunction with an in-memory queue. Our team set out to deliver on pushing the impact of real-time web through maximizing backend resources provided by…

Would this be a firebase competitor? If so, how does it compare?

Hey, it's Travis, one of the co-creators of Razorframe... Firebase is a paid platform-as-a-service that includes realtime database hosting (what it's primarily known for) as well as numerous other services such as app analytics and hosting. It's a great platform and we definitely drew inspiration from them.

Razorframe, on the other hand, is an open-source project that addresses 2 of the main trends we see in modern web applications: real-time client UIs and flexible server-side scaling. We built a Node module that you can bring into your server-side code to quickly get up and running with websockets (via socket.io) and Node clusters in order to accomplish both.

Check us out on GitHub and let us know what you think:)

Re: Show HN: Razorframe – A Node.js module for empowering real-time apps at scale

#7

Post by agentultra »

> Those interactions are held in the queue only as long as the server needs before dequeuing.

How sure are you that this invariant holds? Under what conditions do you expect it to fail?

Clearly this is a fairly new project. 148 commits. No tests, benchmarks, or specifications.

Keep at it. :)

Re: Show HN: Razorframe – A Node.js module for empowering real-time apps at scale

#8

Post by tron1k »

doublerebel wrote: post #6

What happens when one or many Node processes die with items left in the queue? Related, how are graceful restarts handled? (These are issues solved by existing message queues.)

Nothing happens to items in the queue in such a case. New workers will automatically respawn, and the adapter that links all the workers on the back-end will re-attach to newly spawned workers. Clients formerly connected to workers that are now gone will have to re-attach to new workers by socket.io.

Re: Show HN: Razorframe – A Node.js module for empowering real-time apps at scale

#10

Post by tron1k »

agentultra wrote: post #7

> Those interactions are held in the queue only as long as the server needs before dequeuing. How sure are you that this invariant holds? Under what conditions do you expect it to fail? Clearly this is a fairly new project. 148 commits. No tests, benchmarks, or specifications. Keep at it. :)

Thanks for the feedback and support! We have added unit tests this morning and will continue to add more. Also, we have been using Artillery.io for load testing to measure the performance gains from multiple Node workers and the linked-list messaging queue.
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