Rubén Pérez, author of Boost.MySQL and co-maintainer of Boost.Redis, built a group chat server to show how Boost libraries work together in a real application. A working server with authentication, persistent message history, real-time broadcasting, and a React frontend. Something you can fork and deploy. The project is called BoostServerTech Chat. It runs a single C++ process that handles HTTP, WebSocket, Redis, and MySQL connections, all on one thread. This post covers why that design holds up, what it looks like in practice, and where it comes apart. The Stack The server sits behind a React/Next.js frontend and talks to two backing stores: Redis for chat messages and sessions (stored as streams), and MySQL for user accounts. The C++ process does everything else: serves the static frontend files, exposes a REST API for login and account creation, and upgrades HTTP connections to WebSocket for real-time messaging.…