This document discusses using Go for building concurrent applications and describes an instant massive audience polling application built with Go and WebSockets. It provides an example Go code for handling WebSockets on the server side and managing concurrent connections. The core of the application uses a single "model" that implements an event loop to centrally manage polling questions, votes and subscribers across multiple goroutines.

1. Go Synchronized
Andrej Vckovski

2. What I want to transmit
 Go is useful and neat for heavily
concurrent applications
 Webrockets socks!
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3. A small poll
Point your [smartphone] browser to
nca.me/l
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4. nca.me/l
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5. nca.me/l
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6. About go
 Started by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken
Thompson in Fall 2007,
Open-sourced 2009, Go 1 March 2012
 Main features
– C/Pascal/Modula-like, garbage collected, no pointer
arithmetics, type safe, very fast compiler
– Simple type system without hierarchies
– Concepts for concurrent programming in the “CSP”-style
– Embeds dependency management
– Today about similar memory/execution-performance as
Java or Node.
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7. Concurrency?
 Separate, potentially simultaneously executed
computations
 Usually somehow interacting
 Candidates to leverage multi-{core|cpu|node}
environments
 Usually but not necessarily correspond to multiple users
 Often on the server side
And hard to make it right
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8. Go and concurrency
Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) pattern
(C. A. R. Hoare, 1978)
1. Channels
2. Go-routines
3. select-statement
“Do not communicate by sharing memory;
instead, share memory by communicating”
Occam, Erlang, Newsqueak, Limbo, Clojure and many more
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9. Example
package main
import ("fmt"; "time"; "math/rand")
func main() {
table := make(chan string)
for _, player := range [...]string{"alice", "bob"} {
go func(who string) {
num := 0;
for {
ball := <- table;
fmt.Printf("player %s: %sn", who, ball)
table <- fmt.Sprintf("tick-%s-%d",who,num)
time.Sleep(time.Millisecond * time.Duration(rand.Intn(1000)))
num++
}
}(player)
}
table <- "go"
time.Sleep(10 * time.Second)
}
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10. The application:
Very Instant Massive (Audience) Polling
 Presentations
like this one
 TV shows with
added
interactivity
 Pause
entertainment in
a stadium
 Flipped
Classrooms
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© Nhenze
© Chris Lawrence
© Loozrboy
© Jeff Chenqinyi
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11. Browser
JS
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
System context
go
Browser
JS
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
ipoll
server
Presentation Software (e.g., PowerPoint)
JS
Browser
JS
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
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Browser that displays
voting results
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12. Browser
JS
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
WebSockets
go
 Full-duplex conversation
ipoll
over TCP connectionserver
 JS
RFC 6455
 Available in most modern
browsers
 Simple JavaScript binding
JS
 Handshake by HTTP then
,
user-defined messages over
the same socket
Client
(Browser)
HTTP GET Request,
special attributes
HTTP response
“switch protocol”
Browser
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
Browser
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
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Server
Message
Presentation Software (e.g., PowerPoint)
JS
Message
Message
Browser that displays
voting results
Message
Message
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13. Multiplexer
and
Demultiplexer
Browser
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
Browser
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
Browser
that
displays
questions
and
allows
voting
Go synchronized
ipoll
server
Presentation Software (e.g., PowerPoint)
Browser that displays
voting results
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14. Small Demo
Point your smartphone browser to
nca.me/l
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15. Demo: New Question 1
nca.me/l
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16. Demo: New Question 2
nca.me/l
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17. Demo: New Question 3
nca.me/l
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18. WebSocket on server side (go)
func startWebserver() {
// [...]
http.HandleFunc("/svy", surveyHandler)
}
Go
// [...]
func surveyHandler(c http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
// [...]
go websocket.Handler(func (ws *websocket.Conn) { s.VoterHandler(ws)} ).ServeHTTP(c, req)
// [...]
}
func (s *Survey) VoterHandler(ws *websocket.Conn) {
defer func() {
s.voterChan <- voter{ws, false}
log.Printf("connection closed by client")
ws.Close()
}()
s.voterChan <- voter{ws, true} // notify hub of a new voter
for {
// [...]
len, err := ws.Read(buf)
// [...]
var v vote
err = json.Unmarshal(buf, &v)
if err == nil {
s.voteChan <- v
} else {
// [...]
}
}
synchronized
}
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19. Core data massaged at a single place:
The “model” implements an event-loop
func (s *Survey) surveyHub() {
// [...]
t := time.NewTicker(100 * time.Millisecond)
// [...]
for {
select {
case _ = <-t.C: // tick arrived
// [...]
case ctrl := <-s.controlChan: // control message
// [...]
case voter := <-s.voterChan: // voter subscribed
// [...]
case viewer := <-s.viewerChan: // viewer subscribed
// [...]
case admin := <-s.adminChan: // admin subscribed
// [...]
case vote := <-s.voteChan: // a vote arrived
// [...]
}
}
}
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20. Conclusions
 Go (or “CSP”-design) has massively
simplified the concurrency challenges
 WebSockets are easy to use and will be
increasingly popular
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21. http://golang.org
Rob Pike on “concurrency is not parallelism”:
http://vimeo.com/49718712
(mascot by Renée French)

22. Bonus poll
Go synchronized
nca.me/l
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23. Thanks for the attention!
andrej.vckovski@netcetera.com
netcetera.com
ipoll.ch
(coming soon)