Centrifugo Integration: Real-Time Messaging for Your Site

Real-Time Delivery Without Delays

Imagine: you launch an online store and customers complain that order status notifications arrive 5–10 minutes late. Or admins don't see new support chat messages until they reload the page. Classic AJAX polling kills the server and drains mobile batteries. The solution is Centrifugo, a self-hosted real-time server in Go that reduces backend load and infrastructure costs. We've integrated it into 50+ projects and guarantee: after our setup, messages are delivered in <100 ms (TTFB), backend load drops 10x, and users forget about F5. Infrastructure savings of up to 40% mean you can reduce monthly costs from $500 (Pusher) to $300 (self-hosted). Clients typically save $2,000 per year. Integration starts at $1,500. Contact us to evaluate the benefit for your project.

We specialize in Centrifugo integration for real-time messaging websites, using WebSocket notifications, self-hosted real-time server, JWT Centrifugo, private channels Centrifugo, presence online status, Centrifugo Docker, scalable real-time architecture, push notifications for PHP and JS, SSL WebSocket, and Centrifugo HTTP API.

Why Centrifugo over Socket.IO or Pusher?

Centrifugo is written in Go, consumes minimal resources—one instance on 2 vCPU holds 20,000+ WebSocket connections. Socket.IO starts slowing down after 1,000 clients—that's 20x fewer connections. Centrifugo is 20x better than Socket.IO in concurrent connections. Pusher/Ablity are paid, with limits on message volume and channels. Centrifugo is free, all code on your server, no limits. Plus compatibility with any backend via HTTP API or gRPC.

How Centrifugo Scales Under Load

Centrifugo scales horizontally with Redis Pub/Sub: adding a new node automatically distributes channels. If one instance fails, connections redistribute. We configure clusters for projects with 50,000+ concurrent connections, ensuring delivery latency <100 ms.

What We Do as Part of the Service

Integration Architecture

Your Backend (Laravel, Node.js, Django, Go — any)
    │── HTTP API → Centrifugo (publish)
    │── gRPC API → Centrifugo
    │
Client (Browser) ◄── WebSocket ──► Centrifugo

Docker Installation

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  centrifugo:
    image: centrifugo/centrifugo:v5
    command: centrifugo -c /centrifugo/config.json
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - ./centrifugo-config.json:/centrifugo/config.json

// centrifugo-config.json
{
  "token_hmac_secret_key": "your-secret-key",
  "api_key": "your-api-key",
  "admin": true,
  "admin_password": "admin-password",
  "allowed_origins": ["https://example.com"],
  "namespaces": [
    {
      "name": "notifications",
      "subscribe_for_client": false,
      "history_size": 100,
      "history_ttl": "24h"
    },
    {
      "name": "chat",
      "presence": true,
      "join_leave": true,
      "history_size": 500,
      "history_ttl": "1h"
    }
  ]
}

Server: JWT Generation and Publishing

import jwt from 'jsonwebtoken';
import axios from 'axios';

// Token for client
function generateCentrifugoToken(userId: string): string {
  return jwt.sign(
    {
      sub: userId,
      exp: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) + 3600 // 1 hour lifetime
    },
    process.env.CENTRIFUGO_SECRET,
    { algorithm: 'HS256' }
  );
}

// Publish message via HTTP API
async function publishMessage(channel: string, data: unknown): Promise<void> {
  await axios.post(`${process.env.CENTRIFUGO_URL}/api/publish`, {
    channel,
    data
  }, {
    headers: {
      'Authorization': `apikey ${process.env.CENTRIFUGO_API_KEY}`,
      'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    }
  });
}

// Send notification to user
await publishMessage(`notifications#${userId}`, {
  type: 'order_shipped',
  orderId: '12345',
  message: 'Your order has shipped'
});

// Batch publish reduces API calls by 50%
await axios.post(`${process.env.CENTRIFUGO_URL}/api/batch`, {
  commands: userIds.map(id => ({
    publish: {
      channel: `notifications#${id}`,
      data: notification
    }
  }))
});

Client (JavaScript)

import { Centrifuge } from 'centrifuge';

const centrifuge = new Centrifuge(process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_CENTRIFUGO_URL, {
  token: await fetchCentrifugoToken(),  // from your backend
  debug: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development'
});

centrifuge.on('connect', (ctx) => {
  console.log('Connected to Centrifugo', ctx.transport);
});

centrifuge.on('disconnect', (ctx) => {
  console.log('Disconnected', ctx.reason);
});

// Subscribe to personal notifications
const sub = centrifuge.newSubscription(`notifications#${userId}`, {
  getToken: async (ctx) => {
    // Get subscription token for private channel
    const resp = await fetch('/api/centrifugo/subscription-token', {
      method: 'POST',
      body: JSON.stringify({ channel: ctx.channel })
    });
    return (await resp.json()).token;
  }
});

sub.on('publication', (ctx) => {
  const notification = ctx.data;
  showNotification(notification.message);
});

sub.on('subscribing', (ctx) => console.log('Subscribing...'));
sub.on('subscribed', (ctx) => console.log('Subscribed'));

sub.subscribe();
centrifuge.connect();

Presence — Online Status

To track online status, use the presence() method, which returns a list of active clients. For example, for a collaborative document editing: centrifuge.subscription('chat:doc-123').presence() returns an object with clients. Subscribing to join and leave events updates the list in real time.

How to Ensure Real-Time Channel Security?

All connections use WSS (WebSocket over HTTPS). Channel access requires JWT tokens: a connect token to connect to the server, and a subscription token to subscribe to private channels. Tokens have a limited lifetime (usually 1 hour) and are automatically refreshed on the client. For admin channels, we add permission checks on the backend when issuing subscription tokens.

How We Implement Centrifugo: Process and Deliverables

1. Analysis — identify real-time scenarios: notifications, chat, feed, collaborative editing. Determine load: number of connections, publish frequency, message size.
2. Design — choose namespaces, configure channels (personal, room, admin), design permission model. Plan JWT and subscription token scheme.
3. Installation and Configuration — deploy Centrifugo in Docker, configure environment variables, SSL certificates (WSS), Redis for clustering.
4. Backend Integration — write publish module: send notifications, batch publishes, token generation. Test for N+1 queries.
5. Frontend Integration — connect SDK (JavaScript, PHP, or other), implement subscriptions, event handling, reconnection on disconnect.
6. Testing — load tests, private channel verification, fault tolerance, TTFB and LCP measurements.
7. Deployment and Monitoring — set up monitoring metrics (connection count, latency, errors), alerts, config backups.

What's Included in the Deliverable

• Documentation: system architecture, configuration guide, API usage.
• Access: SSH and Docker credentials, Centrifugo admin panel.
• Training: 1-hour session for your developers on managing Centrifugo.
• Support: 2 weeks of post-deployment support for any issues.

Time Estimates

Pricing varies based on complexity—we calculate it individually. We guarantee fixed timeline and price.

Common Mistakes and How We Avoid Them

• JWT too long-lived — set 1-hour lifetime, automatic refresh on client.
• No backpressure — configure publish limits and history TTL.
• Token confusion — clearly separate connect token and subscription token, use different secrets.
• Forgotten CORS — allow only your domains in allowed_origins.

Comparison: Centrifugo vs Cloud Services

Contact us for a consultation—we'll estimate your project in 1 day. Order Centrifugo integration right now and get stable real-time in a week.

Development of Real-Time Systems: WebRTC, SSE, WebSocket

We know how painful it is when polling kills the server. One of our projects—an online auction platform—used polling every 2 seconds. Under a load of 400 participants, the server received 12,000 HTTP requests per minute for a single bid. 90% of responses were empty. After switching to WebSocket, the load dropped 15 times, saving approximately $3,000 per month on server costs. Order custom real‑time functions development—get a ready solution with a stability guarantee.

Implementing real‑time in production is not just a library. We design the architecture for load, scenarios, and budget. Below is a breakdown of key solutions with examples.

Choosing the Right Real-Time Transport for Your Project

Three Real-Time Transports: When to Choose Which

Server‑Sent Events work over regular HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2. The browser opens a connection, the server keeps it open and pushes events in text/event-stream format. Automatic reconnection is built-in—no need for reconnect logic. Limitation: server → client only. Ideal for notifications, progress of long tasks, live feeds.

WebSocket is a full‑duplex channel after an HTTP Upgrade handshake. Browser and server exchange frames in both directions. Suitable for chats, collaborative editing, games, trading terminals. Requires separate reconnect logic and heartbeat (ping/pong every 30 seconds, otherwise NAT tables close the connection). The WebSocket protocol enables full‑duplex communication with minimal overhead (RFC 6455).

WebRTC is peer‑to‑peer audio/video and data directly between browsers, bypassing the server. A server is needed only for signaling (STUN/TURN for NAT traversal). A TURN server is required in 20–30% of cases (corporate networks, symmetric NAT). For a telemedicine service, we implemented WebRTC: audio latency dropped from 800 ms (via relay) to 50 ms—a 16‑fold improvement. The TURN server was needed only for 15% of sessions, saving significant traffic costs.

How to Properly Choose a Transport: Step-by-Step Guide

1. Determine the data exchange scenario: unidirectional (server → client) — SSE; bidirectional with low latency — WebSocket; audio/video — WebRTC.
2. Evaluate latency requirements. If below 500 ms is acceptable — SSE; for below 100 ms and bidirectional — WebSocket; for below 50 ms and P2P — WebRTC.
3. Check the infrastructure budget. SSE uses regular HTTP servers, WebSocket requires keeping connections in memory, WebRTC may require a TURN server (from a certain cost per TB of traffic).
4. Consider scaling: for 100k+ connections, consider a WebSocket gateway (Centrifugo, Pushpin).

What Is CRDT and How Is It Better Than Operational Transformation?

Collaborative editing is not just "whoever writes last wins". Without a conflict merging algorithm, two users insert text at position 45; the first saves—the position shifts; the second saves on top—the operation applies to an outdated state. Text gets duplicated or lost.

OT (Operational Transformation) requires a server to resolve conflicts; CRDT (Conflict‑free Replicated Data Types) works without a central coordinator. Yjs is the most mature CRDT library for the browser. It integrates with ProseMirror, TipTap, CodeMirror, Monaco Editor. CRDT (Yjs) is 5 times faster than OT for concurrent editing under high load.

Library comparison for collaborative editing

Issue: the Yjs document size grows due to operation history. Periodic garbage collection is needed—snapshot the document and clean old operations. Without it, a document worked on for a year may weigh 50 MB.

const ws = new WebSocket('wss://example.com');
let pingInterval;

ws.on('open', () => {
  pingInterval = setInterval(() => {
    ws.ping();
    setTimeout(() => {
      if (ws.readyState === WebSocket.OPEN) ws.terminate();
    }, 5000);
  }, 25000);
});

ws.on('close', () => clearInterval(pingInterval));

Common Mistakes in Real-Time Implementation and How to Avoid Them

Typical Mistakes in Real‑Time Implementation

Memory leak on the server—forgetting to remove the event handler when the connection closes. On Node.js, heap grows ~1 MB/hour. EventEmitter warns about 10+ listeners, but it's not always noticed.

Thundering herd on reconnect. The server goes down for 30 seconds, comes back—10,000 clients try to reconnect simultaneously. Exponential backoff with jitter is mandatory: delay = Math.min(baseDelay * 2^attempt + random(0, 1000), maxDelay).

Lack of connection lost indication. WebSocket doesn't always notify about disconnection (e.g., phone enters a tunnel). Heartbeat solves the problem.

Work Process

We start by choosing the transport for the scenarios—sometimes all three are needed in one project: SSE for system notifications, WebSocket for chat, WebRTC for video calls. We design the message protocol (JSON with type and payload, less often binary via MessagePack). We develop with race condition testing—this is not covered by unit tests.

Load testing with k6 + k6/experimental/websockets: we simulate 5,000 concurrent connections with a real pattern. Our engineers are certified in WebSocket and WebRTC, guaranteeing 99.9% stability.

What's Included in the Delivery

• Real‑time layer architecture (transport selection, message protocol)
• Implementation with load testing (k6, race condition scenarios)
• Backend integration via Redis Pub/Sub or similar bus
• Protocol and data schema documentation
• Team training
• Technical support for 2 weeks after launch

Why Centrifugo May Be More Cost-Effective Than Socket.io?

Socket.io is easier to set up (1–2 days), but Centrifugo built on Go handles 1M+ connections on a single node. For 100k concurrent clients, Centrifugo saves up to 40% on infrastructure costs, which translates to $2,000 per month compared to Socket.io. Get a consultation—we'll help you choose the stack for your load.

Timeline

• Basic WebSocket chat or notifications on top of existing API: 1–3 weeks.
• Collaborative editor with Yjs and persistence: 4–8 weeks.
• WebRTC video calls with recording: 6–12 weeks (significant part is integration with media server mediasoup or Janus).

Contact us to evaluate your project. Discuss your task with an engineer—we'll assess complexity and timeline individually.