Distributed Chat Architecture

Coming Soon

This lesson will teach you how to design and implement a fully distributed chat server architecture. You’ll learn how to:

• Design distributed system architecture for chat servers
• Implement load balancing and connection distribution
• Ensure data consistency across multiple nodes
• Build distributed message routing and delivery
• Handle cross-node user sessions and room management

What You’ll Build

By the end of this lesson, you’ll have implemented:

• Complete distributed chat server architecture
• Load balancing with sticky sessions
• Distributed message routing and delivery
• Cross-node data consistency mechanisms
• Distributed user session and room management

Key Concepts Preview

% Distributed room management
get_room_node(RoomId) ->
    Hash = erlang:phash2(RoomId),
    Nodes = [node() | nodes()],
    lists:nth((Hash rem length(Nodes)) + 1, Nodes).

% Cross-node message routing
route_message(RoomId, Message) ->
    TargetNode = get_room_node(RoomId),
    case TargetNode =:= node() of
        true -> chat_room:send_message(RoomId, Message);
        false -> rpc:call(TargetNode, chat_room, send_message, [RoomId, Message])
    end.

% Distributed user sessions
global:register_name({user_session, UserId}, self()).

This lesson builds on the node discovery and clustering from Lesson 26 and prepares you for the fault tolerance patterns we’ll explore in Lesson 28.

This lesson is currently under development. Check back soon for the complete content!