Building the best Pub/Sub system in NextJS with Redis!

Introduction

In modern web applications, real-time communication is becoming more and more important. With the rise of single-page applications and real-time updates, developers are constantly searching for new and better ways to manage data andevents across distributed systems.

Redis is a popular, high-performance in-memory data store that can be used to implement pub/sub systems, making it an ideal choice for building real-time applications. In this article, we'll show you how to build a pub/sub system in Redis that can be used in Next.js applications.

What is a pub/sub system?

If you don't know what a pub/sub system is make sure to check out our System Design course here!

What is Redis?

Redis is a popular and high-performance in-memory data store that can be used to implement pub/sub systems. Redis was originally developed as a key-value store, but it has evolved over time to support a variety of data structures and use cases. One of its key strengths is its speed: Redis is capable of handling millions of operations per second and can process data with sub-millisecond latency. This makes Redis an ideal choice for building real-time applications that require fast and efficient communication.In addition to its performance, Redis provides several features that make it suitable for implementing pub/sub systems. Redis allows publishers to send messages to channels, and subscribers can then receive messages from those channels. Redis provides various options for managing channels, such as subscribing to multiple channels at once, unsubscribing from channels, and filtering messages based on patterns.

Another benefit of using Redis for pub/sub systems is its data persistence. Redis provides different levels of data persistence, which allow users to choose the right balance between performance and durability for their specific use case. Redis also provides various options for handling failures and ensuring that messages are not lost in transit.

Setting up the Redis server

Before we can start building our pub/sub system in Redis, we first need to set up a Redis server. Redis can be installed on a local machine or a cloud server, and there are several ways to install Redis depending on your platform and preferences.

To install Redis on a local machine, you can download the Redis binary from the official website and extract it to a directory of your choice. Once you've extracted the binary, you can start Redis by running the redis-server executable. Redis should now be running and accepting connections on the default port (6379).

To install Redis on a cloud server, you can use a cloud provider's managed Redis service or set up Redis manually. Most cloud providers offer managed Redis services that can be easily provisioned and scaled, but they may come with additional costs. If you prefer to set up Redis manually, you can choose to install it on a cloud server using a package manager (e.g. apt-get or yum), or by building Redis from source.

Once you have a running Redis server, you can connect to it using the Redis Next.js library. The Redis library provides several methods for creating connections to Redis servers, and it also provides various options for configuring the connection, such as setting the Redis server host and port, configuring authentication, and enabling SSL/TLS encryption.

In the next section, we'll show you how to create a publisher in Next.js that can publish messages to Redis channels.

Let's start setting up the NextJS project!

To use Redis pub/sub in a Next.js application, we first need to set up a Next.js project. If you haven't already done so, you can create a new Next.js project using the following steps:

Install Node.js: If you don't already have Node.js installed, you can download and install it from the official website.

Create a new Next.js project: You can create a new Next.js project by running the following command in your terminal:npx create-next-app my-app

Install the following dependency: npm install --save ioredis

Start the development server: You can start the Next.js development server by navigating to the project directory (cd my-app) and running the following command: npm run dev

Once you have a Next.js project set up, you can install the Redis Node.js library and start integrating Redis pub/sub into your application. In the next sections, we'll show you how to create a publisher and a subscriber in Node.js, and how to handle subscriptions in a Next.js application using the Next.js API routes feature.

Creating the best Pub/Sub system

1. First create an .env

2. Then create a folder called “lib” in the main directory of the NextJS project, then create there inside the lib folder a file named “redis.ts”.

3. Now we will focus on creating the logic for the pub/sub system, let’s start by creating a file called “room.ts” and let’s start implementing the code: