{"id":10583,"date":"2025-10-22T20:31:37","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T20:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pokecon.jp\/job\/?p=10583"},"modified":"2025-10-22T20:31:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T20:31:37","slug":"you-dont-need-kafka-building-a-message-queue-with-only-two-unix-signals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pokecon.jp\/job\/10583\/","title":{"rendered":"You don’t need Kafka: Building a message queue with only two UNIX signals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/p>\n
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Have you ever asked yourself what if we could replace any message broker with a very simple one using only two UNIX signals? Well, I\u2019m not surprised if you didn\u2019t. But I did. And I want to share my journey of how I achieved it.<\/p>\n

If you want to learn about UNIX signals, binary operations the easy way, how a message broker works under the hood, and a bit of Ruby, this post is for you.<\/p>\n

And if you came here just because of the clickbait title, I apologize and invite you to keep reading. It\u2019ll be fun, I promise.<\/p>\n

\"image\"\/<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about UNIX<\/h2>\n

A few days ago, I saw some discussion on the internet about how we could send messages between processes. Many people think of sockets, which are the most common way to send messages, even allowing communication across different machines and networks. Some don\u2019t even realize that pipes are another way to send messages between processes:<\/p>\n

$<\/span> echo<\/span> 'hello'<\/span> |<\/span> base64<\/span>\n<\/p>
aGVsbG8K<\/span>\n<\/p><\/code><\/pre>\n
Here\u2019s what\u2019s happening:<\/p>\n