Introduction

Pigeon is an end-user server application (HTTP Message Broker) designed for distribution of text messages in HTTP format.

In short

Pigeon is capable to:

1. Enqueue a text message from external source using REST API or direct insert into Pigeon DB by the external app
2. Convert it into one or more HTTP messages with a specified body/query string parameters using appropriate Plugins (plugins can be developed by end-users using Groovy script)
3. Dispatch the resulting messages ansynchronously to one or more recipients (URLs) using a variety of HTTP connection and authentication mechanisms (such as AWS v4 signature)
4. If needed retry sending the message several times

Why?

Pigeon is an enterprise-grade software created within banking/fintech industry. It is having some useful features to help survive in the daily routines and bureaucracy of large organizations:

• DB agnostic (tested and used with MySQL, PostgreSQL and most importantly - with MSSQL which is very lock sensitive + AD authentication support)
• Durable (e.g. handles DB restarts, MySQL session timeouts, etc)
• Supports retries when remote server was down
• Plugins - develop or change plugins without deploying the new app version
• Predictable - allows to explicitly control number of concurrent threads and connections
• Situation-friendly - as a Client software, Pigeon supports self-signed server HTTPS certificates, wrong server HTTPS certificates and even HTTP
• User-friendly - raw HTTP log viewing in browser without special character escaping
• Outstanding logging capabilities - using Bobbin and BlackBox
• Easy installation
• Complete documentation
• Simple configuration using only 1 file
• Supports enterprise security features

Technology stack

• Spring Boot
• Groovy
• SQL DB (via JPA and Spring Data)
• REST+HATEOAS (via Spring Data Rest repositories)
• Functionality extensible using Plugins (Groovy scripts)
• Scalable (multithreaded app with configurable outbound thread pool sizes for load balancing and scalability)

Try me now!

We have deployed a demo Pigeon Plugins repository is as a demo Heroku app (pigeon-public).

Just open the below URL in your browser:

https://pigeon-public.herokuapp.com/pigeon/enqueue?source=browser&endpoint=GET_TO_SMTP&recipient=email@gmail.com&subject=Test123&text=Test1234&from=pigeon@i-t.io

This demo Heroku pigeon-public app asynchronously enqueues and sends a email.

• Replace email@gmail.com with your email (we will not save/share/store/disclose it, it is fully private)
  
• Only Gmail addresses are supported in this demo
  
• You can change also subject, text and from
  
• Check spam folder in your Gmail account
  
• Navigate through returned URLs to see message status and HTTP logs
  
• First time request may take up to 50 seconds, due to free Heroku dyno unidlying startup.

Sample configuration

{
  "inputQueues": [
    {
      "name": "SMSGLOBAL",
      "outputQueues": [
        {
          "name": "SMSGLOBAL",
          "url": "https://api.smsglobal.com/http-api.php",
          "maxRetryCount": 0,
          "normalThreadCount": 4,
          "retryThreadCount": 0,
          "conversionModuleName": "PASSTHROUGH_GET.groovy",
          "senderClassName": "io.infinite.pigeon.http.SenderDefaultHttps",
          "httpProperties": {
            "username": "smsglobaluser",
            "password": "smsglobalpassword"
          },
          "extensions": {
            "from": "your%20service"
          }
        },
        {
          "name": "SMSGLOBAL_CLOSED_LOOP",
          "pollPeriodMilliseconds": 500,
          "url": "http://localhost:8089/pigeon/plugins/input/http/MOCK_SMSGLOBAL_HTTP",
          "maxRetryCount": 0,
          "normalThreadCount": 4,
          "retryThreadCount": 0,
          "conversionModuleName": "PASSTHROUGH_GET.groovy",
          "senderClassName": "io.infinite.pigeon.http.SenderDefaultHttp",
          "httpProperties": {
            "username": "smsglobaluser",
            "password": "smsglobalpassword"
          },
          "extensions": {
            "from": "your%service"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}