A very symplistic implementation of pub/sub pattern using only ANSI C and Redis.
- A C compiler, e.g., gcc
- git: A distributed version control system
- Redis: An in-memory data store
- hiredis: A minimalistic C client library for the Redis database
- Doxygen (optional): A documentation generator
Consult offical documentation how to install Redis on your platform. In this guide we run Redis Stack in a Docker container. Below is an "executive summary" compiled based on information available on this website.
To get started with Redis Stack downlaod its Docker image with
docker pull redis/redis-stack:latest
Then start Redis Stack container by running the command below:
docker run -d --name redis-stack -p 6379:6379 -p 8001:8001 redis/redis-stack:latest
The docker run command above also exposes RedisInsight on port 8001. Point
your browser to localhost:8001 to use it.
In most major GNU/Linux distributions hiredis is available a package which can be easily installed using the package manager that comes with the distribution. For example, on Ubuntu 22.04 you can install hiredis with
sudo apt install libhiredis-dev
If the package with the library is not available on your platform, you can compile it source using cmake.
At the moment there is no package you can download and install. The code must
be compiled manually using cmake.
Clone the repository with to a directory of choice:
git clone
Compile the code with
cd TIM-towncrier
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build
If the compilation was successful you should see two binary files in the
build directory: pub and sub.
Optionally, you can place them at any location specified by you PATH
environment variable, e.g., $HOME/bin. Otherwise you will need to specify the
full path (absolute or relative) when calling any of these binaries.
Make sure the Docker container with your Redis Stack is up and running.
Open a terminal and start the publisher with
pub foo
where foo is the name of the channel the publisher will be sending its
messages to.
By default, the publisher assumes that the Redis instance is running locally on you computer. If it is not the case, point the publisher to the host running the Redis data store:
pub -H 10.0.0.2 foo
Type pub -h to see all supported options and arguments.
Once the publisher starts sending messages (consecutive integers padded with 0s) to the channel you should see them in the terminal. For example:
$ ./pub foo
[INFO] Connecting to the message broker
[INFO] Creating a publisher
[INFO] Starting to send messages
[INFO] Message '000000' sent, no. of subscribers: 0
[INFO] Message '000001' sent, no. of subscribers: 0
...
Open another terminal and similarly start the subscriber with
sub foo
If everything worked as expected you should see messages that subscriber receives from the channel it is subscribed to. For example:
$ ./sub foo
[INFO] Connecting to the message broker
[INFO] Creating a subscriber
[INFO] Starting to monitor channel 'foo'
[INFO] Received message '000038' from channel 'foo'
[INFO] Received message '000039' from channel 'foo'
...
You can terminate both the publisher and the subscriber by pressing Ctrl+C in
each of the terminal you opened previously.
To generate the documentation from the annotated sources run following commands
cd docs
doxygen
and open file:///path/to/TIM-towncrier/doc/html/index.html in your browser.