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I am currently looking to buildout a messaging service where users can send and receive messages privately between each other. I may have a need for multi-user chat, but for the most part, I only want single recipients to be able to read messages sent to them.

With looking at RabbitMQ, does it make sense to use one exchange, and create a queue for each user when they login and destroy each queue on logout? Are there major performance issues with creating a queue for each user or are there better alternatives?

I am building a REST API and plan on having users send messages to others through an endpoint (/send) and subscribe to their own message streams via websockets or something similar. I will probably store messages in MongoDB as well, so users can access all of their previous messages. Any suggestions on structure are appreciated.

Jacob
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I think your approach is correct. You event don't need an exchange if you will use the default exchange (AMQP Default). And during login create a new queue and keep queue name same as user name. (Just need to make sure user names are unique) And if you publish message to the default exchange with username (ie: queue name) as routing key, RbbitMQ will route that message to that queue only. And on logout if you delete the queue then user is going to miss the messages when he is not online. If it is OK then create queue after login and use the configuration exclusive which says queue gets deleted when there is no consumer. But if you want to keep offline messages then you need to create queue permanently during user signup.

Manmay
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  • Thanks for the suggestions. I do want to archive all messages, as well as send any messages a user might have missed to them when they are back online. I plan on adding each message to MongoDB and then sending to queue. Is it viable to have thousands, maybe many more queues permanently created for users or should I try and handle sending missed messages through Mongo? – Jacob Jul 31 '15 at 18:32