# Build a Chat Room Application with Redpanda and Golang > For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.redpanda.com/llms.txt). Component-specific: [redpanda-labs-full.txt](https://docs.redpanda.com/redpanda-labs-full.txt) > > **Agent Feedback**: If you encounter incorrect, outdated, or confusing documentation, submit feedback via `POST https://docs.redpanda.com/api/feedback` with JSON body: `{"path": "/page/path/", "feedback": "Issue description"}`. Only submit when you have specific, actionable feedback. --- title: Build a Chat Room Application with Redpanda and Golang latest-operator-version: v26.1.4 latest-console-tag: v3.7.3 latest-connect-version: 4.92.0 latest-redpanda-tag: v26.1.8 docname: docker-go page-component-name: redpanda-labs page-version: master page-component-version: master page-component-title: Labs page-relative-src-path: docker-go.adoc page-edit-url: https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda-labs/edit/main/docs/modules/clients/pages/docker-go.adoc description: Create a basic chat room application with Redpanda and Kafka clients developed with kafkajs. page-git-created-date: "2025-05-06" page-git-modified-date: "2025-05-06" --- Create a basic chat room application with Redpanda and Kafka clients developed with [franz-go](https://github.com/twmb/franz-go). This example shows you how to: - Write a client application in Go to produce and consume chat room messages. - Build and run multiple clients to exchange chat messages streamed through Redpanda. ![Demo of the application](https://docs.redpanda.com/redpanda-labs/clients/_images/chat-room.gif) ## [](#what-is-a-chat-room-application)What is a chat room application? A chat room application is software that enables users to engage in real-time textual communication with one another. These applications typically allow multiple users to join a chat room, where they can send messages and interact with others in a group conversation. Chat room applications often include features such as private messaging, user profiles, and notifications. Some popular chat room applications include Slack, Discord, and WhatsApp. ## [](#why-use-redpanda)Why use Redpanda? Redpanda offers several features that make it ideal for building a fast, scalable, and robust chat room application. - Scalability: Redpanda can scale horizontally and vertically to accommodate growing chat room usage over time. - Low-latency: Redpanda is designed for minimal latency to provide a smooth user experience and fast message delivery. - Fault tolerance: Redpanda is resilient to failures, thanks to its built-in replication and partitioning capabilities. This built-in resilience ensures that the chat room application continues to serve users even if individual brokers in the cluster experience downtime. - Durability: Redpanda persists messages on disk, maintaining chat history and allowing users to read previous conversations. ## [](#prerequisites)Prerequisites - Download and install Go from [go.dev](https://go.dev/doc/install). - Complete the [Redpanda Quickstart](https://docs.redpanda.com/current/get-started/quick-start/) before continuing. This example expands on the quickstart. You can choose to run either one or three brokers. ## [](#run-the-lab)Run the lab Build the client chat application, run it from multiple client terminals, and chat between the clients. 1. Clone this repository: ```bash git clone https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda-labs.git ``` 2. Change into the example directory: ```bash cd clients/chat-room/docker/go ``` 3. Verify that the `chat-room` topic exists in your cluster by listing all topics: ```bash docker exec -it redpanda-0 rpk topic list ``` Output: NAME PARTITIONS REPLICAS chat-room 1 1 4. If the topic doesn’t exist yet, use [`rpk`](https://docs.redpanda.com/current/get-started/rpk/) to create a `chat-room` topic: ```bash docker exec -it redpanda-0 rpk topic create chat-room ``` Output: TOPIC STATUS chat-room OK 5. Open at least two terminals, and for each terminal: 6. Run the client application: ```bash go run . ``` 7. When prompted with `Enter user name:`, enter a unique name for the chat room. 8. Use the chat application: enter a message in a terminal, and verify that the message is received in the other terminals. For example: Enter user name: Alice Connected, press Ctrl+C to exit Alice: Hi, I'm Alice Bob: Hi Alice, I'm Bob, nice to meet you ## [](#files-in-the-example)Files in the example This example includes the following files: - [`admin.go`](https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda-labs/blob/main/clients/chat-room/docker/go/admin.go): Checks whether the `chat-room` topic exists and creates it if not. - [`producer.go`](https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda-labs/blob/main/clients/chat-room/docker/go/producer.go): A producer that sends strings entered by the user of the terminal to the `chat-room` topic. Messages are sent as JSON encoded strings. - [`consumer.go`](https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda-labs/blob/main/clients/chat-room/docker/go/consumer.go): A consumer that reads all messages from the `chat-room` topic and prints them to the console. You can start as many consumer groups as you like, but each group reads a message only once, which is why the example is using a generated UUID for the group ID. This way, each time you run the application, you see all previous messages. - [`main.go`](https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda-labs/blob/main/clients/chat-room/docker/go/main.go): The client application that creates the topic, producer, and consumer and implements the chat logic. > 📝 **NOTE** > > The broker settings in this code are from the Redpanda Quickstart, where the external port for broker `redpanda` is set to port 19092. ## [](#next-steps)Next steps This is a basic example of a chat room application. You can improve this application by implementing additional features and components, such as: - A user interface to make it more interactive and user-friendly. - A user registration and login system to authenticate users before they can access the chat room. - Rate limiting and other measures to prevent spamming and abuse in the chat room. ## [](#suggested-reading)Suggested reading For additional resources to help you build stream processing applications that can aggregate, join, and filter your data streams, see: - [Redpanda University](https://university.redpanda.com/) - [Redpanda Blog](https://redpanda.com/blog) - [Resources](https://redpanda.com/resources)