MerryGit Messaging

A full-stack real-time messaging platform designed around a microservices architecture, with a focus on privacy, scalability, real-time communication, and cloud-native deployment.

Core Features

• Real-Time Messaging: Socket.IO-based one-to-one and group messaging
• Authentication: JWT-based authentication with dedicated user management
• Privacy Controls: Message expiration with automated cleanup
• Media Sharing: Cloudinary-powered media uploads within conversations
• Group Messaging: Multi-user conversations with real-time message delivery
• Email Processing: Asynchronous email operations through RabbitMQ

Microservices Architecture

User Service:

• Node.js + Express.js microservice responsible for authentication and user management
• JWT-based authentication and protected user operations
• MongoDB persistence for user data

Chat Service:

• Node.js + Express.js microservice handling messaging and conversations
• Socket.IO for real-time WebSocket communication
• MongoDB for message and conversation persistence
• Redis for caching and performance optimization
• RabbitMQ for asynchronous event communication

Mail Service:

• FastAPI + Python microservice dedicated to email processing
• RabbitMQ consumer for asynchronous email events
• aio-pika for RabbitMQ integration
• Decouples email processing from the main application services

System Design

Event-Driven Architecture:

• RabbitMQ enables asynchronous communication between services
• Services remain loosely coupled instead of relying on direct synchronous dependencies
• Background operations can be processed independently from user requests

Real-Time Architecture:

• Persistent Socket.IO connections between clients and the Chat Service
• Server-side event handling and real-time message broadcasting
• Redis used to support high-frequency application operations

Service Isolation:

• Independent User, Chat, and Mail services
• Each service has a clearly defined responsibility
• Services can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently

DevOps & Infrastructure

Containerization:

• Dockerized application services for consistent deployments
• Independent containers for microservices and supporting components

Kubernetes:

• Deployed microservices on DigitalOcean Kubernetes
• Kubernetes used for service orchestration, networking, and deployment management
• Separate services allow independent scaling and deployment

Infrastructure as Code:

• Terraform used to provision and manage the cloud infrastructure
• Infrastructure configuration maintained as version-controlled code

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Redux Toolkit, Tailwind CSS, Socket.IO Client
• Backend: Node.js, Express.js, FastAPI, Python
• Real-Time: Socket.IO, WebSockets
• Databases: MongoDB, Redis
• Messaging: RabbitMQ, amqplib, aio-pika
• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, DigitalOcean, Terraform
• Media: Cloudinary

Engineering Focus

Microservices architecture
Event-driven communication
Real-time distributed systems
Cloud-native deployment
Infrastructure as Code
Caching and asynchronous processing
Scalable backend architecture

Live Demo | GitHub Repository | API Documentation | Project Video