Push-to-Talk Backend for a Popular Messaging App

Industry

Media & Entertainment, Telecommunications, Software products

Technologies

PHP, AWS, Cloud

Summary

A popular internet messaging and calling app needed a reliable backend to process and store push-to-talk (PTT) voice messages. INNERLUXES, drawing on strong VoIP expertise, built the backend on Amazon cloud services with a Couchbase store and a chunked keep-alive streaming mechanism that delivers voice messages in near real time — an invisible but critical part of a smooth user experience.

About the Client

The Client is a popular internet messaging and calling service, available across mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) and desktop, with hundreds of millions of active users.

The Challenge

While working on the first versions of its mobile app, the Client needed a competent, reliable partner to help develop a backend service to process and store PTT messages. Although the backend is not visible to end users, it is highly important for ensuring smooth, comfortable app usage.

The Solution

INNERLUXES was chosen as the application development partner for its VoIP expertise. The scope was ambitious and required top experts. To ensure the feature worked flawlessly, INNERLUXES needed to:

Create an upload and download service.
Create a background processing service.
Implement deployment scripts with separate configuration files for each environment.
Implement real-time behavior (partial voice message sending for faster communication).
Create monitoring.
Provide complete unit testing.

The team used Amazon cloud solutions — Simple Queue Service (SQS), Simple Storage Service (S3), and the AWS PHP library — and selected Couchbase, a NoSQL database, for temporary storage, which covered all the requirements.

Since voice messaging was a key part of the app, the team needed the fastest possible data transfer. INNERLUXES created a mechanism that divides each voice message into several chunks (one chunk = a one-second message) and sends them chunk by chunk over a keep-alive HTTP connection, ensuring faster communication and a better user experience.

The Results

INNERLUXES developed a high-grade backend for the messaging application's push-to-talk feature.
The backend contributed to the overall product's success.

Technologies and Tools

PHP, Couchbase, AWS SQS, AWS S3, Linux daemons, Zabbix, PHPUnit.

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