Go (golang) Bindings for 0mq (zmq, zeromq)

This package implements Go (golang) bindings for the 0mq C API.

Note that this is not the same as this implementation or this implementation.

Installing

Install gozmq with:

go get github.com/alecthomas/gozmq

This implementation works currently against:: ZeroMQ 2.2.x

If you're using ZeroMQ 2.1.x, install with:

go get -tags 'zmq_2_1' github.com/alecthomas/gozmq

If that doesn't work you might need to checkout the source and play with the CGO_LDFLAGS and CGO_CFLAGS in the Makefile:

git clone git://github.com/alecthomas/gozmq.git
cd gozmq
gomake install
popd

Differences from the C API

The API implemented by this package does not attempt to expose zmq_msg_t at all. Instead, Recv() and Send() both operate on byte slices, allocating and freeing the memory automatically. Currently this requires copying to/from C malloced memory, but a future implementation may be able to avoid this to a certain extent.

All major features are supported: contexts, sockets, devices, and polls.

Example

Here are direct translations of some of the examples from this blog post.

A simple echo server:

package main

import zmq "github.com/alecthomas/gozmq"

func main() {
  context, _ := zmq.NewContext()
  socket, _ := context.NewSocket(zmq.REP)
  socket.Bind("tcp://127.0.0.1:5000")
  socket.Bind("tcp://127.0.0.1:6000")

  for {
    msg, _ := socket.Recv(0)
    println("Got", string(msg))
    socket.Send(msg, 0)
  }
}

A simple client for the above server:

package main

import "fmt"
import zmq "github.com/alecthomas/gozmq"

func main() {
  context, _ := zmq.NewContext()
  socket, _ := context.NewSocket(zmq.REQ)
  socket.Connect("tcp://127.0.0.1:5000")
  socket.Connect("tcp://127.0.0.1:6000")

  for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
    msg := fmt.Sprintf("msg %d", i)
    socket.Send([]byte(msg), 0)
    println("Sending", msg)
    socket.Recv(0)
  }
}

Caveats

Memory management

It's not entirely clear from the 0mq documentation how memory for zmq_msg_t and packet data is managed once 0mq takes ownership. After digging into the source a little, this package operates under the following (educated) assumptions:

• References to zmq_msg_t structures are not held by the C API beyond the duration of any function call.
• Packet data is reference counted internally by the C API. The count is incremented when a packet is queued for delivery to a destination (the inference being that for delivery to N destinations, the reference count will be incremented N times) and decremented once the packet has either been delivered or errored.