Implementing Real-time WebSockets with Golang and Database Integration

3 min readJun 15, 2024

Introduction

Real-time web applications are becoming increasingly popular as they provide instant updates and enhance user experience. In this article, we will guide you through integrating real-time WebSockets with Golang and databases. We will showcase how to build applications that deliver real-time updates to clients by efficiently pushing database changes through WebSockets.

Prerequisites

Before we dive into the implementation, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

Basic knowledge of Golang
Understanding of WebSockets
Familiarity with databases (we will use PostgreSQL in this example)
Go installed on your machine
PostgreSQL database setup

Setting Up Your Environment

To get started, set up your project directory and initialize a new Go module:

mkdir real-time-websockets
cd real-time-websockets
go mod init real-time-websockets

Install the required packages:

go get github.com/gorilla/websocket
go get github.com/jackc/pgx/v4

Creating the WebSocket Server

First, let’s create a basic WebSocket server using the Gorilla WebSocket package. Create a new file main.go and add the following code:

Integrating with PostgreSQL

Next, we need to integrate our WebSocket server with a PostgreSQL database. We’ll use the pgx package for database interactions. Update main.go with the following code to include database setup and integration:

Listening for Database Changes

To listen for database changes, you can use PostgreSQL’s LISTEN and NOTIFY commands. This example assumes you have set up triggers to notify changes. Update the wsHandler function:

Let’s Test the App!

1. Set Up the PostgreSQL Database

First, ensure your PostgreSQL database is set up and running. Create a new database and a table for testing purposes. For example:

2. Start the WebSocket Server

Run your Golang WebSocket server:

go run main.go

3. Create a WebSocket Client

To test the WebSocket server, you can create a simple WebSocket client using a web browser with a simple HTML/JavaScript client.

Using a Web Browser

Create an HTML file client.html:

Open client.html in a web browser.

4. Insert Data into the Database

Insert data into the test_data table to trigger notifications:

INSERT INTO test_data (data) VALUES ('Hello, WebSocket!');

Check the WebSocket client (web browser) to see if the message appears.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve covered how to set up a real-time WebSocket server using Golang and integrate it with a PostgreSQL database. We’ve demonstrated how to push database changes to clients in real-time using WebSockets. This setup can be the foundation for building more complex real-time applications, enhancing the user experience with instant updates.

For the complete source code, visit my GitHub repository.