Ably is the platform that powers synchronized digital experiences in realtime. Whether attending an event in a virtual venue, receiving realtime financial information, or monitoring live car performance data – consumers simply expect realtime digital experiences as standard. Ably provides a suite of APIs to build, extend, and deliver powerful digital experiences in realtime for more than 250 million devices across 80 countries each month. Organizations like Bloomberg, HubSpot, Verizon, and Hopin depend on Ably’s platform to offload the growing complexity of business-critical realtime data synchronization at global scale. For more information, see the Ably documentation.
This is a Go client library for Ably. Supported features and known limitations are documented here.
~ $ go get -u github.com/ably/ably-go/ably
See Requirements
client, err := ably.NewRealtime(ably.WithKey("xxx:xxx"))
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
channel := client.Channels.Get("test")
You may monitor events on connections and channels.
client, err = ably.NewRealtime(
ably.WithKey("xxx:xxx"),
ably.WithAutoConnect(false), // Set this option to avoid missing state changes.
)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
// Set up connection events handler.
client.Connection.OnAll(func(change ably.ConnectionStateChange) {
fmt.Printf("Connection event: %s state=%s reason=%s", change.Event, change.Current, change.Reason)
})
// Then connect.
client.Connect()
channel = client.Channels.Get("test")
channel.OnAll(func(change ably.ChannelStateChange) {
fmt.Printf("Channel event event: %s channel=%s state=%s reason=%s", channel.Name, change.Event, change.Current, change.Reason)
})
unsubscribe, err := channel.SubscribeAll(ctx, func(msg *ably.Message) {
fmt.Printf("Received message: name=%s data=%v\n", msg.Name, msg.Data)
})
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
unsubscribe1, err := channel.Subscribe(ctx, "EventName1", func(msg *ably.Message) {
fmt.Printf("Received message: name=%s data=%v\n", msg.Name, msg.Data)
})
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
unsubscribe2, err := channel.Subscribe(ctx, "EventName2", func(msg *ably.Message) {
fmt.Printf("Received message: name=%s data=%v\n", msg.Name, msg.Data)
})
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
err = channel.Publish(ctx, "EventName1", "EventData1")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
Publish
will block until either the publish is acknowledged or failed to
deliver.
Alternatively you can use PublishAsync
which does not block:
channel.PublishAsync("EventName1", "EventData11", func(err error) {
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("failed to publish", err)
} else {
fmt.Println("publish ok")
}
})
Note the onAck
callback must not block as it would block the internal client.
Errors returned by this library may have an underlying *ErrorInfo
type.
See Ably documentation for ErrorInfo.
badClient, err := ably.NewRealtime(ably.WithKey("invalid:key"))
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
err = badClient.Channels.Get("test").Publish(ctx, "event", "data")
if errInfo := (*ably.ErrorInfo)(nil); errors.As(err, &errInfo) {
fmt.Printf("Error publishing message: code=%v status=%v cause=%v", errInfo.Code, errInfo.StatusCode, errInfo.Cause)
} else if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
err = channel.Presence.Enter(ctx, "presence data")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
err = channel.Presence.EnterClient(ctx, "clientID", "presence data")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
// Update also has an UpdateClient variant.
err = channel.Presence.Update(ctx, "new presence data")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
// Leave also has an LeaveClient variant.
err = channel.Presence.Leave(ctx, "last presence data")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
clients, err := channel.Presence.Get(ctx)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for _, client := range clients {
fmt.Println("Present client:", client)
}
unsubscribe, err = channel.Presence.SubscribeAll(ctx, func(msg *ably.PresenceMessage) {
fmt.Printf("Presence event: action=%v data=%v", msg.Action, msg.Data)
})
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
unsubscribe, err = channel.Presence.Subscribe(ctx, ably.PresenceActionEnter, func(msg *ably.PresenceMessage) {
fmt.Printf("Presence event: action=%v data=%v", msg.Action, msg.Data)
})
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
- The default
MaxMessageSize
is automatically configured by Ably when connection is established with Ably. - This value defaults to 16kb for free and 64kb for PAYG account, please get in touch if you would like to request a higher limit for your account.
- Upgrading your account to higher limit will automatically update
MaxMessageSize
property and should accordingly set the client side connection read limit. - If you are still facing issues when receiving large messages or intentionally want to reduce the limit, you can explicitly update the connection read limit:
client, err = ably.NewRealtime(ably.WithKey("xxx:xxx"))
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
client.Connection.SetReadLimit(131072) // Set read limit to 128kb, overriding default ConnectionDetails.MaxMessageSize
Note - If connection read limit is less than size of received message, the client will throw an error "failed to read: read limited at {READ_LIMIT + 1} bytes" and will close the connection.
All examples assume a client and/or channel has been created as follows:
client, err := ably.NewREST(ably.WithKey("xxx:xxx"))
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
channel := client.Channels.Get("test")
err = channel.Publish(ctx, "HelloEvent", "Hello!")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
// You can also publish multiple messages in a single request.
err = channel.PublishMultiple(ctx, []*ably.Message{
{Name: "HelloEvent", Data: "Hello!"},
{Name: "ByeEvent", Data: "Bye!"},
})
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
// A REST client can publish messages on behalf of another client
// by providing the connection key of that client.
err := channel.Publish(ctx, "temperature", "12.7", ably.PublishWithConnectionKey("connectionKeyOfAnotherClient"))
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
pages, err := channel.History().Pages(ctx)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for pages.Next(ctx) {
for _, message := range pages.Items() {
fmt.Println(message)
}
}
if err := pages.Err(); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
pages, err := channel.Presence.Get().Pages(ctx)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for pages.Next(ctx) {
for _, presence := range pages.Items() {
fmt.Println(presence)
}
}
if err := pages.Err(); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
pages, err := channel.Presence.History().Pages(ctx)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for pages.Next(ctx) {
for _, presence := range pages.Items() {
fmt.Println(presence)
}
}
if err := pages.Err(); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
pages, err := client.Stats().Pages(ctx)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for pages.Next(ctx) {
for _, stat := range pages.Items() {
fmt.Println(stat)
}
}
if err := pages.Err(); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
status, err := channel.Status(ctx)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Print(status, status.ChannelId)
- By default, internal logger prints output to
stdout
with default logging level ofwarning
. - You need to create a custom Logger that implements
ably.Logger
interface. - There is also an option provided to configure loglevel.
type customLogger struct {
*log.Logger
}
func (s *customLogger) Printf(level ably.LogLevel, format string, v ...interface{}) {
s.Logger.Printf(fmt.Sprintf("[%s] %s", level, format), v...)
}
func NewCustomLogger() *customLogger {
logger := &customLogger{}
logger.Logger = log.New(os.Stdout, "", log.LstdFlags)
return logger
}
client, err = ably.NewRealtime(
ably.WithKey("xxx:xxx"),
ably.WithLogHandler(NewCustomLogger()),
ably.WithLogLevel(ably.LogWarning),
)
The ably-go
SDK doesn't provide a direct option to set a proxy in its configuration. However, you can use standard environment variables to set up a proxy for all your HTTP and HTTPS connections. The Go programming language will automatically handle these settings.
To configure the proxy, set the HTTP_PROXY
and HTTPS_PROXY
environment variables with the URL of your proxy server. Here's an example of how to set these variables:
export HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:8080
export HTTPS_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:8080
proxy.example.com
is the domain or IP address of your proxy server.8080
is the port number of your proxy server.
- Protocol: Make sure to include the protocol (
http
orhttps
) in the proxy URL. - Authentication: If your proxy requires authentication, you can include the username and password in the URL. For example:
http://username:password@proxy.example.com:8080
.
After setting the environment variables, the ably-go
SDK will route its traffic through the specified proxy for both Rest and Realtime clients.
For more details on environment variable configurations in Go, you can refer to the official Go documentation on http.ProxyFromEnvironment.
For Rest client, you can also set proxy by providing custom http client option ably.WithHTTPClient
:
ably.WithHTTPClient(&http.Client{
Transport: &http.Transport{
Proxy: proxy // custom proxy implementation
},
})
Important Note - Connection reliability is totally dependent on health of proxy server and ably will not be responsible for errors introduced by proxy server.
Although the ablytest
package is available as a part of ably-go, we do not recommend using it as a sandbox for your own testing, since it's specifically intended for client library SDKs and we don’t provide any guarantees for support or that it will remain publicly accessible.
It can lead to unexpected behaviour, since some beta features may be deployed on the sandbox
environment so that they can be tested before going into production.
You should rather use, ably.NewRealtime
by passing the ABLY_KEY
, which would be using the Ably production environment.
client, err := ably.NewRealtime(ably.WithKey("xxx:xxx"))
You can also use the control api to setup a test environment using https://github.com/ably/ably-control-go/.
Demo repositories hosted at ably-labs which use ably-go
.
- Ableye
- AblyD
- Ably Go Terminal Chat
- Broadcasting messages in Go with Ably and Redis
- Sync Edit
- Word Game
Broaden your knowledge of realtime in Go with these useful materials:
- Building realtime apps with Go and WebSockets: client-side considerations
- Guide to Pub/Sub in Golang
Whenever a new version of Go is released, Ably adds support for that version. The Go Release Policy supports the last two major versions. This SDK follows the same policy of supporting the last two major versions of Go.
Please see our Upgrade / Migration Guide for notes on changes you need to make to your code to update it to use the new API introduced by version 1.2.x.
Users updating from version 1.1.5 of this library will note that there are significant breaking changes to the API.
Our current approach to versioning is not compliant with semantic versioning, which is why these changes are breaking despite presenting only a change in the minor
component of the version number.
This library targets the Ably 2.0 client library specification. List of available features for our client library SDKs can be found on our feature support matrix page.
As of release 2.0, the following are not implemented and will be covered in future releases. If there are features that are currently missing that are a high priority for your use-case then please contact Ably customer support. Pull Requests are also welcomed.
-
Push notifications admin API is not implemented.
-
JWT authentication using
auth-url
is not implemented. See jwt auth issue for more details.
-
Inband reauthentication is not supported; expiring tokens will trigger a disconnection and resume of a realtime connection. See server initiated auth for more details.
-
Channel suspended state is partially implemented. See suspended channel state.
-
Realtime Ping function is not implemented.
-
Message Delta Compression is not implemented.
-
Push Notification Target functional is not applicable for the SDK and thus not implemented.
Please visit https://faqs.ably.com/ for access to our knowledgebase. If you require support, please visit https://ably.com/support to submit a support ticket.
You can also view the community reported Github issues.
For guidance on how to contribute to this project, see CONTRIBUTING.md.