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I'm writing a multi chatroom application that requires persistent storage of the conversations (ie new users should be able to see old messages). I'm using socket.io if that helps.

Currently, when a user logs into a room, my node app checks to see if someone has been to that room yet (and each room has a hierarchical parent, for instance the room called Pets may belong to North America since there'd be a separate European Pets room).

If this is the first time a person has been in the room for a while, it loads all messages from redis for that room. (Eventually redis stored conversations make their way into MySQL).

So I have a multidimensional array called messages["PARENT"]["ROOM"], such that messages["North America"]["Pets"] will be an array that has all the messages for that room. Aside from misunderstanding how arrays in JS work (as explained in this question: javascript push multidimensional array), it feels like I'm over complicating the situation. My reasoning for using the MD array was that it didn't make sense to be round trips requesting all the messages from Redis for a room that was active.

What would be the most logical approach to what I'm trying to accomplish? Should I just be using Redis and forgo this? How about some message queue or maybe a pubsub server? (I'm trying to not complicate this as it's just a prototype for a friend).

Thank you,

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From an architectural point of view, this is a poor design. What if tomorrow you wanted to scale this application by setting up more servers? Surely these multi-dimensional arrays would be specific to each node instance. Decoupling the storage has its own advantages, one being scaling out - the storage is now shared among several servers. It all depends on what you want to achieve. You may also run out of memory if your MD increases in size, thus hampering your applications performance.

ffff
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  • I fully agree -- I just worry about the roundtrip to redis everytime, or am I being overly cautious? – StackOverflowed Oct 10 '15 at 18:35
  • Yes, you are, and it is a good thing. However do look at the consequences when your application will have to handle several users. With your design, the system will get very complicated. Software design is an art in itself @StackOverflowed – ffff Oct 10 '15 at 18:42
  • If my answer has met your expectations, then please select the answer for the sake of this community @StackOverflowed – ffff Nov 05 '15 at 13:03