Question 1

How does Iodine compare to Puma for real-time apps?

Accepted Answer

Iodine often outperforms Puma in benchmarks for WebSocket and high-concurrency scenarios due to its C-based facil.io core, but Puma has broader ecosystem support and more stable SSL. Iodine's native Pub/Sub gives it an edge for built-in real-time features.

Question 2

How to set up WebSockets with Iodine in Rails?

Accepted Answer

Use a middleware or rack upgrade approach by defining a WebSocket callback class and setting env['rack.upgrade'] in your Rails app. The README provides a chat room example where iodine handles network logic while your code focuses on application data.

Question 3

Does Iodine support SSL for production use?

Accepted Answer

No, the README explicitly warns against using SSL/TLS in production due to known issues like #95 and #94. It's recommended to avoid it or use external proxies like Nginx for SSL termination in secure deployments.

Question 4

Can I use Iodine on Windows?

Accepted Answer

Iodine is optimized for Linux/Unix and may not perform well on Windows, as the README states it's ideal for evented IO on Unix-like systems. Deployment on Windows is not recommended due to architectural differences.

Question 5

How to scale Pub/Sub with Redis in Iodine?

Accepted Answer

Use the -r flag with a Redis URL from the command line or set Iodine::PubSub.default to a Redis engine in Ruby code. This allows horizontal scaling across multiple iodine clusters using Redis for message distribution without changing application logic.

Question 6

What are the memory management features of Iodine?

Accepted Answer

Iodine includes a custom memory allocator to reduce heap fragmentation and supports hot restarts via SIGUSR1 to clear memory issues in long-running processes. It also recommends integrating with jemalloc for further optimization in production environments.

Iodine

What is Iodine?

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