Relay Gateway Bundle

decent-newsroom/relay-gateway-bundle is a reusable Symfony bundle for running a long-lived Nostr relay gateway behind Redis Streams.

The bundle keeps relay WebSocket connections alive in a console command while request workers communicate with it through Redis. It uses decent-newsroom/nostr-client-bundle for the underlying relay transport and keeps host-specific relay policy, signing, and diagnostics behind contracts.

What It Owns

• The app:relay-gateway console command.
• Redis stream protocol between request workers and the gateway process.
• A request-worker client for query, publish, warm, close, and health checks.
• Persistent user-keyed and anonymous shared relay connection pools.
• NIP-42 AUTH challenge handling through a host-provided signer contract.
• Gateway-level connection limits, idle cleanup, heartbeat writes, and response TTLs.
• Optional health, activity, and filter-stat recorder hooks.

What It Does Not Own

• Global relay registry policy or per-user relay selection.
• Nostr signing implementation details.
• Event persistence, moderation, article projection, or Redis read models.
• Browser/Mercure relay AUTH fallback.
• Direct fallback relay reads when the gateway is disabled.

If the host does not provide adapters, the bundle installs conservative null or passthrough implementations for its optional contracts.

Main Classes

Public Contracts

• RelayUrlResolverInterface - normalizes relay URLs for connection, AUTH, and optional shared prewarm.
• AuthChallengeSignerInterface - signs a relay AUTH challenge for a user pubkey and returns a kind 22242 event, or null on failure.
• GatewayHealthRecorderInterface - records relay success, failure, received events, AUTH requirement, and AUTH status.
• GatewayActivityRecorderInterface - records user-keyed AUTH and publish activity.
• GatewayFilterStatsRecorderInterface - computes privacy-preserving filter signatures and records request, EOSE, and timeout stats.

Redis Streams

The client and command communicate through these keys:

The gateway writes heartbeat state while running so request workers and operators can detect whether the process is alive.

Configuration

# config/packages/relay_gateway.yaml
relay_gateway:
    stream_block_ms: 1000
    response_ttl_seconds: 60
    heartbeat_ttl_seconds: 30
    heartbeat_interval_seconds: 5
    auth_timeout_seconds: 60

All values are optional. Runtime command options can further tune connection limits and request timeouts.

Host Wiring

Install the package from the local path repository during extraction work:

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "packages/relay-gateway-bundle",
            "options": {
                "symlink": true
            }
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "decent-newsroom/relay-gateway-bundle": "@dev"
    }
}

Register the bundle if Symfony Flex has not done so:

use DecentNewsroom\RelayGatewayBundle\RelayGatewayBundle;

return [
    RelayGatewayBundle::class => ['all' => true],
];

The bundle expects a Redis service and the services exported by decent-newsroom/nostr-client-bundle.

The host should alias bundle contracts to adapters where local policy or diagnostics are needed:

services:
    DecentNewsroom\RelayGatewayBundle\Contract\RelayUrlResolverInterface:
        alias: App\RelayGateway\RelayUrlResolverAdapter

    DecentNewsroom\RelayGatewayBundle\Contract\AuthChallengeSignerInterface:
        alias: App\RelayGateway\IdentityAuthChallengeSigner

    DecentNewsroom\RelayGatewayBundle\Contract\GatewayHealthRecorderInterface:
        alias: App\RelayGateway\GatewayHealthRecorderAdapter

    DecentNewsroom\RelayGatewayBundle\Contract\GatewayActivityRecorderInterface:
        alias: App\RelayGateway\GatewayActivityRecorderAdapter

    DecentNewsroom\RelayGatewayBundle\Contract\GatewayFilterStatsRecorderInterface:
        alias: App\RelayGateway\GatewayFilterStatsRecorderAdapter

Running The Gateway

docker compose exec php bin/console app:relay-gateway

Useful options:

• --time-limit=3600 - graceful restart interval, with 0 for unlimited.
• --query-timeout=15 - default per-request query timeout.
• --publish-timeout=10 - default per-request publish timeout.
• --max-user-conns=5 - maximum open connections for one user pubkey.
• --max-total-user-conns=200 - maximum open user-keyed connections.
• --max-shared-conns=50 - maximum anonymous shared connections.
• --user-idle-timeout=7200 - idle timeout for user-keyed connections.
• --on-demand-idle-timeout=300 - idle timeout for on-demand shared connections.
• --prewarm-shared-relays - open configured shared relay connections at startup.
• --auth-timeout=60 - NIP-42 AUTH roundtrip timeout.

Client API

Inject DecentNewsroom\RelayGatewayBundle\Service\RelayGatewayClient into request-time services:

$result = $gateway->query(
    relayUrls: ['wss://relay.example'],
    filters: ['kinds' => [30023], 'limit' => 20],
    pubkey: $userPubkeyHex,
    timeout: 15,
);

$publishResult = $gateway->publish(
    relayUrls: ['wss://relay.example'],
    signedEvent: $event,
    pubkey: $userPubkeyHex,
    timeout: 10,
);

The client also exposes:

• warmUserConnections(string $pubkey, array $authRelayUrls) for login warmup;
• closeUserConnections(string $pubkey) for logout cleanup;
• isGatewayAlive() for lightweight process checks.

When the gateway is disabled or Redis is unavailable, the host should fall back to its direct relay transport.

NIP-42 AUTH

User-keyed sockets can answer relay AUTH challenges. The gateway asks AuthChallengeSignerInterface for a signed kind 22242 event using the user pubkey, relay URL, challenge, and timeout. The host can implement that with a server-side remote signer first, then a browser/Mercure fallback outside this bundle if desired.

Anonymous shared sockets do not sign AUTH challenges.

Testing

This package currently relies on host-level validation:

docker compose exec php bin/console lint:container
docker compose exec php bin/phpunit

The deeper integration notes live in:

• docs/relay-gateway-bundle.md
• ../../documentation/Nostr/relay-gateway-service.md
• ../../documentation/Nostr/user-relay-activity-log.md