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Overview
About Ion
Ion is a production-grade concurrency and resilience toolkit for Go, designed to help you build reliable, high-performance applications. Whether you're building microservices, API gateways, data processing pipelines, or distributed systems, Ion provides the primitives you need with enterprise-grade reliability, observability, and performance.
Zero dependencies. Context-first. Production-ready.
Project Information
- Repository: https://github.com/kolosys/ion
- Import Path:
github.com/kolosys/ion - License: MIT
- Version: latest
Core Philosophy
Ion is built on three fundamental principles:
- Context-First: All operations respect
context.Contextfor cancellation, timeouts, and request-scoped values - Zero-Panic: Library code returns errors, never panics, ensuring predictable behavior
- Observable: Built-in hooks for logging, metrics, and tracing with zero overhead when not configured
What You'll Find Here
This documentation is organized into several sections to help you find what you need:
- Getting Started - Installation instructions and quick start guides
- Core Concepts - Fundamental concepts and architecture details
- Advanced Topics - Performance tuning and advanced usage patterns
- API Reference - Complete API reference documentation
- Examples - Working code examples and tutorials
Package Overview
Ion provides five core packages, each designed for specific concurrency and resilience patterns:
Circuit Breaker (circuit)
Protect your services from cascading failures with automatic failure detection and recovery.
Use when:
- Calling external services or APIs
- Accessing databases or caches
- Performing operations that can fail under load
- Building resilient microservices
Real-world scenarios:
- Payment processing services that need fast-fail behavior
- HTTP clients calling third-party APIs
- Database connections that may timeout
- Service mesh integration for distributed systems
Rate Limiting (ratelimit)
Control the rate at which operations execute with token bucket, leaky bucket, and multi-tier limiters.
Use when:
- Protecting APIs from being overwhelmed
- Respecting external API rate limits
- Controlling resource consumption
- Building API gateways
Real-world scenarios:
- API gateway rate limiting per user, route, or resource
- Client libraries respecting external API limits
- Background job processing with controlled throughput
- Multi-tenant systems with per-tenant limits
Semaphore (semaphore)
Control access to shared resources with weighted semaphores and configurable fairness.
Use when:
- Limiting concurrent database connections
- Controlling memory or CPU usage
- Managing access to external resources
- Implementing resource pools
Real-world scenarios:
- Database connection pool management
- Limiting concurrent file operations
- Controlling memory-intensive operations
- CPU-bound task scheduling
Worker Pool (workerpool)
Execute tasks with bounded concurrency, graceful shutdown, and queue management.
Use when:
- Processing background jobs
- Handling request queues
- Managing concurrent operations
- Building task processors
Real-world scenarios:
- Image processing pipelines
- Email sending services
- Data transformation jobs
- Event processing systems
Observability (observe)
Pluggable interfaces for logging, metrics, and tracing across all Ion components.
Use when:
- Integrating with existing observability stacks
- Adding structured logging
- Collecting performance metrics
- Implementing distributed tracing
Real-world scenarios:
- Integration with Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog
- Structured logging with
slogorzap - OpenTelemetry tracing integration
- Custom metrics collection
Quick Links
- Installation Guide - Get started with Ion
- Quick Start Guide - Your first Ion program
- API Reference - Complete API documentation
- Examples - Working code examples
Design Principles
Performance
Ion is optimized for performance with:
- <200ns hot paths for critical operations
- Zero allocations in steady state
- Lock-free algorithms where possible
- Minimal overhead when not configured
Reliability
Ion ensures reliable operation through:
- Deterministic behavior under load
- Graceful degradation when resources are exhausted
- Comprehensive error handling with context
- Thread-safe public APIs
Developer Experience
Ion prioritizes developer experience with:
- Intuitive APIs that are easy to use correctly
- Functional options for flexible configuration
- Rich error messages with context
- Comprehensive documentation and examples
Use Cases
Ion powers production systems across various domains:
- 🌐 API Gateways: Multi-tier rate limiting, circuit breakers, request routing
- 📊 Data Pipelines: Bounded processing, backpressure handling, error recovery
- ⏰ Background Jobs: Controlled concurrency, graceful shutdown, resource management
- 🔄 Microservices: Service protection, cascading failure prevention, observability
- 🏦 Financial Systems: High-frequency trading, payment processing, risk management
- 🎮 Gaming Platforms: Matchmaking, leaderboards, real-time event processing
Community & Support
- GitHub Issues: https://github.com/kolosys/ion/issues
- Discussions: https://github.com/kolosys/ion/discussions
- Repository Owner: kolosys
Getting Help
If you encounter any issues or have questions:
- Check the API Reference for detailed documentation
- Browse the Examples for common use cases
- Search existing GitHub Issues
- Open a new issue if you've found a bug or have a feature request
Next Steps
Ready to get started? Head over to the Installation Guide to begin using Ion in your projects.