zeromq

ZeroMQ.js Next Generation

ØMQ bindings for Node.js. The goals of this library are:

• Semantically similar to the native ØMQ library, while sticking to JavaScript idioms.
• Use modern JavaScript and Node.js features such as async/await and async iterators.
• High performance.
• Fully usable with TypeScript (3+).

Useful links

• ZeroMQ.js API reference.
• ZeroMQ project documentation.
  • Note: The Node.js examples on zeromq.org do not yet reflect the new API, but the Guide in particular is still a good introduction to ZeroMQ for new users.

Table of contents

• Installation
  • Prebuilt binaries
  • Building from source
• Examples
  • Push/Pull
  • Pub/Sub
  • Req/Rep
  • TypeScript
  • More examples
  • Compatibility layer for version 4/5
• Contribution
• History

Installation

Install ZeroMQ.js with prebuilt binaries:

npm install zeromq

Requirements for using prebuilt binaries:

• Node.js 10.2+ or Electron 3+ (requires a N-API version 3+)

Prebuilt binaries

The following platforms have a prebuilt binary available:

• Linux on x86-64 with libstdc++.so.6.0.21+ (glibc++ 3.4.21+), for example:
  • Debian 9+ (Stretch or later)
  • Ubuntu 16.04+ (Xenial or later)
  • CentOS 8+
• Linux on x86-64 with musl, for example:
  • Alpine 3.3+
• MacOS 10.9+ on x86-64
• Windows on x86/x86-64

If a prebuilt binary is not available for your platform, installing will attempt to start a build from source.

Building from source

If a prebuilt binary is unavailable or if you want to pass certain options during build, you can build this package from source.

Make sure you have the following installed before attempting to build from source:

• Node.js 10+ or Electron 3+
• A working C++17 compiler toolchain with make
• Python 3 with Node 12.13+ (or legacy Python 2.7)
• CMake 2.8+
• curl

To install from source, specify build_from_source=true in a .npmrc file

build_from_source=true

When building from source, you can also specify additional build options in a .npmrc file in your project:

Available Build Options

👉🏻 Options

Draft support

By default libzmq is built with support for Draft patterns (e.g. server-client, radio-dish, scatter-gather). If you want to build libzmq without support for Draft, you can specify the following in .npmrc:

zmq_draft=false

Not Synchronous Resolve

If you want to send/receive on the socket immediately, you can specify the following in .npmrc:

zmq_no_sync_resolve="true"

Shared library support

If you want to link against a shared ZeroMQ library installed on your system, you can build skip downloading libzmq and link with the installed library instead by specifying the following in .npmrc:

zmq_shared=true

Alternative libzmq version

You can specify an alternative version or Git revision of libzmq to build against by specifying the following in .npmrc:

zmq_version="4.3.5"

Debug build of libzmq

If you want to build libzmq with debug symbols, you can specify the following in .npmrc:

zmq_build_type="Debug"

Cross-compilation for different architectures

If you want to cross-compile for a different architecture, you can specify the following in .npmrc:

arch="arm64"
target_arch="arm64"

MacOS Deployment Target

If you want to specify the MacOS deployment target, you can specify the following in .npmrc:

macos_deployment_target="10.15"

Examples

Note: These examples assume the reader is familiar with ZeroMQ. If you are new to ZeroMQ, please start with the ZeroMQ documentation.

More examples can be found in the examples directory.

Push/Pull

This example demonstrates how a producer pushes information onto a socket and how a worker pulls information from the socket.

producer.js

Creates a producer to push information onto a socket.

const zmq = require("zeromq")

async function run() {
  const sock = new zmq.Push()

  await sock.bind("tcp://127.0.0.1:3000")
  console.log("Producer bound to port 3000")

  while (true) {
    await sock.send("some work")
    await new Promise(resolve => {
      setTimeout(resolve, 500)
    })
  }
}

run()

worker.js

Creates a worker to pull information from the socket.

const zmq = require("zeromq")

async function run() {
  const sock = new zmq.Pull()

  sock.connect("tcp://127.0.0.1:3000")
  console.log("Worker connected to port 3000")

  for await (const [msg] of sock) {
    console.log("work: %s", msg.toString())
  }
}

run()

Pub/Sub

This example demonstrates using zeromq in a classic Pub/Sub, Publisher/Subscriber, application.

publisher.js

Create the publisher which sends messages.

const zmq = require("zeromq")

async function run() {
  const sock = new zmq.Publisher()

  await sock.bind("tcp://127.0.0.1:3000")
  console.log("Publisher bound to port 3000")

  while (true) {
    console.log("sending a multipart message envelope")
    await sock.send(["kitty cats", "meow!"])
    await new Promise(resolve => {
      setTimeout(resolve, 500)
    })
  }
}

run()

subscriber.js

Create a subscriber to connect to a publisher's port to receive messages.

const zmq = require("zeromq")

async function run() {
  const sock = new zmq.Subscriber()

  sock.connect("tcp://127.0.0.1:3000")
  sock.subscribe("kitty cats")
  console.log("Subscriber connected to port 3000")

  for await (const [topic, msg] of sock) {
    console.log(
      "received a message related to:",
      topic,
      "containing message:",
      msg,
    )
  }
}

run()

Req/Rep

This example illustrates a request from a client and a reply from a server.

client.js

const zmq = require("zeromq")

async function run() {
  const sock = new zmq.Request()

  sock.connect("tcp://127.0.0.1:3000")
  console.log("Producer bound to port 3000")

  await sock.send("4")
  const [result] = await sock.receive()

  console.log(result)
}

run()

server.js

const zmq = require("zeromq")

async function run() {
  const sock = new zmq.Reply()

  await sock.bind("tcp://127.0.0.1:3000")

  for await (const [msg] of sock) {
    await sock.send(2 * parseInt(msg, 10))
  }
}

run()

TypeScript

This library provides typings for TypeScript version 3.0.x and later.

Requirements

• For TypeScript version >= 3:
  • compilerOptions
• For TypeScript version < 3.6:
  • either set compilerOptions.target to esnext or later (e.g. es2018)
  • or add the following, or similar, libraries to compilerOptions.lib (and include their corresponding polyfills if needed): es2015, ESNext.AsyncIterable

Example Usage

import {Request} from "zeromq"
// or as namespace
import * as zmq from "zeromq"

const reqSock = new Request()
//...
const repSock = new zmq.Reply()

More examples

More advanced examples can be found in the examples directory of this repository.

Or you can browse the API reference documentation to see all socket types, methods & options as well as more detailed information about how to apply them.

Compatibility layer for version 4/5

The next generation version of the library features a compatibility layer for ZeroMQ.js versions 4 and 5. This is recommended for users upgrading from previous versions.

Example:

const zmq = require("zeromq/v5-compat")

const pub = zmq.socket("pub")
const sub = zmq.socket("sub")

pub.bind("tcp://*:3456", err => {
  if (err) throw err

  sub.connect("tcp://127.0.0.1:3456")

  pub.send("message")

  sub.on("message", msg => {
    // Handle received message...
  })
})

Contribution

If you are interested in making contributions to this project, please read the following sections.

Dependencies

In order to develop and test the library, you'll need the tools required to build from source (see above).

Additionally, having clang-format is strongly recommended.

Defining new options

Socket and context options can be set at runtime, even if they are not implemented by this library. By design, this requires no recompilation if the built version of ZeroMQ has support for them. This allows library users to test and use options that have been introduced in recent versions of ZeroMQ without having to modify this library. Of course we'd love to include support for new options in an idiomatic way.

Options can be set as follows:

const {Dealer} = require("zeromq")

/* This defines an accessor named 'sendHighWaterMark', which corresponds to
   the constant ZMQ_SNDHWM, which is defined as '23' in zmq.h. The option takes
   integers. The accessor name has been converted to idiomatic JavaScript.
   Of course, this particular option already exists in this library. */
class MyDealer extends Dealer {
  get sendHighWaterMark(): number {
    return this.getInt32Option(23)
  }

  set sendHighWaterMark(value: number) {
    this.setInt32Option(23, value)
  }
}

const sock = new MyDealer({sendHighWaterMark: 456})

When submitting pull requests for new socket/context options, please consider the following:

• The option is documented in the TypeScript interface.
• The option is only added to relevant socket types, and if the ZMQ_ constant has a prefix indicating which type it applies to, it is stripped from the name as it is exposed in JavaScript.
• The name as exposed in this library is idiomatic for JavaScript, spelling out any abbreviations and using proper camelCase naming conventions.
• The option is a value that can be set on a socket, and you don't think it should actually be a method.

Testing

The test suite can be run with:

npm install
npm run build
npm run test

The test suite will validate and fix the coding style, run all unit tests and verify the validity of the included TypeScript type definitions.

Some tests are not enabled by default:

• API Compatibility tests from ZeroMQ 5.x have been disabled by default. You can include the tests with INCLUDE_COMPAT_TESTS=1 npm run test
• Some transports are not reliable on some older versions of ZeroMQ, the relevant tests will be skipped for those versions automatically.

Publishing

To publish a new version, run:

npm version <new version>
git push && git push --tags

Wait for continuous integration to finish. Prebuilds will be generated for all supported platforms and attached to a Github release. Documentation is automatically generated and committed to gh-pages. Finally, a new NPM package version will be automatically released.

History

Version 6+ is a complete rewrite of previous versions of ZeroMQ.js in order to be more reliable, correct, and usable in modern JavaScript & TypeScript code as first outlined in this issue. Previous versions of ZeroMQ.js were based on zmq and a fork that included prebuilt binaries.

See detailed changes in the CHANGELOG.