Communicating between two nodejs application

Question

I have three (nodejs) processes P1, P2, P3.

• Function A of P1 completes its execution it sends some data to P2.

• P2 performs its activities and its output should be sent to P3.

• P3 works on the input sends some acknowledgement data to Function B of P1.

All three are different node js applications and runs on different servers (in the same LAN). The question is what should be the communication mechanism between these processes.

Three options appears to be viable:

1) REST API (Express)

Let all the processes be Express REST APIs and using the http node js package call the required functions

2) Pub/Sub

When P1 completes the work, it post the output as a message to a topic and P2 becomes a subscriber and onMessage P2 process executes.

3) TCP/IP

A simple TCP/IP server-client architecture where P1 becomes the server client and P2 as server. Whenever P1 completes the work send the output through sockets.

All three options are for used for many to one or many to many communication so I guess there could be a lot of unnecessary overhead as my requirement has only one to one communication between the processes.

Is there any other method that i can use or one of these best suits is the dilemma.

Please suggest.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can work with mqtt protocol. This is a very light weight and fast protocol. In this protocol you will get a publisher, a subscriber and a broker. Publisher will send data to subscriber under a topic via mqtt broker. It is almost same as Pub/Sub.

MQTT Architecture

MQTT

Note : Function A of P1 will publish data and P2 will subscribe. After P2 completes its activities it will publish data to P3 and P3 will be in subscribing mode. After that P3 will publish acknowledgement and Function B of P1 will subscribe the topic.