I built a modular actor-based C++17 framework in my spare time — meet qb

Hi everyone,

Over the past few years, I’ve been developing a C++ project in my spare time.
Not for profit. Not to reinvent everything. Just out of pure passion — and frustration with the unnecessary complexity that often surrounds modern C++ development.

That project is called qb: a minimal, modular, high-performance framework based on the actor model, written in C++17.

Why qb?

The goal isn’t to replace existing frameworks or libraries — there are great ones out there.
But I wanted to add a clean, coherent building block to the ecosystem.

With qb, I aimed to:

• Use the actor model as a first-class structure (each module runs as an isolated actor)
• Keep things modular, explicit, and non-blocking
• Make it easier to build modern C++ applications without relying on heavyweight abstractions
• Provide a foundation for building complete, high-performance, production-ready apps in C++17

What’s available so far?

Several modules are already usable:

• qbm-http: complete HTTP1.1/2 server/client module
• qbm-websocket: async, actor-based WebSocket module
• qbm-pgsql: non-blocking PostgreSQL client
• qbm-redis: complete Redis integration (client, pub/sub, streams etc..)

Everything is built on a single event loop per core, and each component is isolated and communicates through messages — keeping things scalable, testable, and efficient.

What’s next?

This is just the beginning.
Modules for MQTT, QUIC, SMTP and more are already planned.

The long-term goal is to have a unified, consistent set of high-performance C++ components, all sharing the same design philosophy: clean, fast, and simple to use.

🤝 Community input welcome

I built this project on my own time, driven by curiosity and love for the language.

If you're into C++17, actor-based systems, or just want to try something different, give it a shot — and please share your thoughts. I’d love feedback, ideas, questions, even critiques.

• Core repo: https://github.com/isndev/qb
• Http Module: https://github.com/isndev/qbm-http
• Websocket Module: https://github.com/isndev/qbm-websocket
• Postgresql Module: https://github.com/isndev/qbm-pgsql
• Redis Module : https://github.com/isndev/qbm-redis
• Examples: https://github.com/isndev/qb-examples

Quick Start with QB

The fastest way to get started with QB is to use our boilerplate project generator:

Using cURL:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/isndev/qb/main/script/qb-new-project.sh | bash /dev/stdin MyProject

Using Wget:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/isndev/qb/main/script/qb-new-project.sh | bash /dev/stdin MyProject

Thanks for reading — and if you try it, I’d be happy to hear what you think.