I have an app with backend written in node.js and app written in dart(flutter).
We tend to display feeds on the homepage. But the user doesn't see the latest feeds until a manual refresh is done.
How can I prevent this manual refresh.
Currently we have a rest api in place which is called on the refresh.
Will sending a socket event help or should I use gRPC server streaming.
Related
I've been working on the front-end so far, now I'm going to create my first full-stack application. I want to use node.js, express and AWS for this.
At the design stage, I already encountered a few problems. Therefore, I have a few questions and I am asking you for help:
Can I send a message (simple JSON or database value) from the server to all clients who have already opened my home page in a simple and cheap way?
I'm not talking about logged in users, but all who downloaded the main page (GET, '/')?
Using the admin panel ('www.xxxxxxxxx/admin'), I want to send a message to the server once a day. Then I want to change the HTML to display this message. I was thinking to use EJS for this and download this message from the database.
Can I make it better? If someone visits my home page (GET, '/'), EJS will download the message from the database each time! Even though its value is the same for 24 hours. Can I get the value once and then use it until the value is changed? How to store the message? As a JSON on the server? Or maybe in the .env file?
If the user refreshes the page, do I have to pay for calling all AWS functions to build the page each time? Even if nothing has changed in the files?
How to check if the page has new content and then send it to the user, instead of sending the unchanged page files: .html, .js, .css, etc.?
Can I send the user only the changed, dynamically created html file, and not send again unchanged .js and .css files?
Does every user who opens the home page (GET, '/') create a new connection to the server using WebSocket / socket.io?
I will try to answer some of your questions:
Can I send a message (simple JSON or database value) from the server to all clients who have already opened my home page in a simple
and cheap way? I'm not talking about logged in users, but all who
downloaded the main page (GET, '/')?
I guess you mean sending push notifications from the server to the user. This can be done with different services depending on what are you trying to build.
If you are planning to use GraphQL, you already have GraphQL subscriptions out of the box. If you are using AWS, go for Appsync, which is the AWS service for GraphQL.
If you are using REST and a WebApp (not a mobile app), go for AWS IoT using lambdas. Here is a good resource using Serverless Framework (API Gateway + lambdas + IoT) for unauthenticated users: https://www.serverless.com/blog/serverless-notifications-on-aws
If you are planning to use notifications on a mobile app, you can go for SNS, the "de facto" service for push notifications in AWS world.
Using the admin panel ('www.xxxxxxxxx/admin'), I want to send a message to the server once a day. Then I want to change the HTML to display this message. I was thinking to use EJS for this and download this message from the database. Can I make it better? If someone visits my home page (GET, '/'), EJS will download the message from the database each time! Even though its value is the same for 24 hours. Can I get the value once and then use it until the value is changed? How to store the message? As a JSON on the server? Or maybe in the .env file?
Yes, this is the way it's expected to work. The HTML is changed dynamically using frontend code in Javascript; which makes calls (using axios for example) to the backend every time you get into, i.e. "/" path. You can store this data in frontend variables, or even use state management in the frontend using REDUX, VUEX, etc. Remember the frontend code will always run in the browser of your users, not on your servers!
If the user refreshes the page, do I have to pay for calling all AWS functions to build the page each time? Even if nothing has changed in the files?
What you can do is store all your HTML, CSS, Javascript in an S3 bucket and serve from there (this is super cheap, even free till a certain limit). If you want to use Server Side Rendering (SSR), then yes, you'll need to serve your users every time they make a GET request for example. If you use lambda, the first million request per month are free. If you have an EC2 instance to serve your content, then a t2.micro is also free. If you need more than that, you'll need to pay.
How to check if the page has new content and then send it to the user, instead of sending the unchanged page files: .html, .js, .css, etc.?
I think you need to understand how JS (or frameworks like React, Vue or Angular) do this. Basically you download the js code on the client, and the js makes all the functionality to update backend and frontend accordingly. In order to connect frontend with backend, use Axios for example.
Can I send the user only the changed, dynamically created html file, and not send again unchanged .js and .css files?
See answer above. Use frameworks like React or Vue, will help you a lot.
Does every user who opens the home page (GET, '/') create a new connection to the server using WebSocket / socket.io?
Depends on what you code. But by default what happens is the user will make a new GET request everytime he accesses your domain, and that's it. (It's not establishing any connection if you don't tell the code to do so).
Hope this helps!! Happy coding!
Currently, I have figured out how to make API calls to YouTube Data Api and getting the number of likes of any video. And I'm making the call every minute. I do not know, however, how to update the corresponding element in html with the updated value.
Previously, I had made API calls in app.get and then updated using response.send() but that meant that my number would only update everytime I reload the page. Then I took the code block out of app.get but realised I had no way of update the UI with updated numbers from the API call.
I would like to ask how I can go about doing this. Thank you.
for that, you can use WebSocket module
Websocket is just a protocol like HTTP and it provides a persistent connection between a client and server that both parties can use to start sending data at any time.
Websocket is also provided by many front-end frameworks such as flutter, native android, react native etc.
So I have made a back-end in NodeJS but I ran into one problem, how is it possible to link my back-end to my front end html/css page and use my NodeJS functions as scripts?
In case this wasn't clear to you, your nodejs back-end runs on your server. The server's job (in a webapp) is to deliver data to the browser. It delivers HTML pages. It delivers resources referenced in those HTML pages such as scripts, images, fonts, style sheets, etc.. It can answer programmatic requests for data also.
The scripts in those web pages run inside the browser which is nearly always (except for some developer testing scenarios) running on a completely different computer on a completely different local network (only connected via some network - usually the internet).
As such, a script in the browser cannot directly reference variables that exist in the server or call functions that exist on the server. They are completely different computers.
The kinds of things you can do in order to work-around this architectural limitation are as follows:
The server can dynamically modify the web page it is sending the browser and it can insert data into that web page. That data can be in the form of already rendered HTML or it can be variables inside of script tags that your web page Javascript can then use.
The javascript in the web page can make network requests to your server asking it for data. These are often called AJAX calls. In this scenario, some Javascript in your page sends a request to the server to retrieve some data or cause some action on the server. The server receives that request, carries out the desired operation and then returns a result back to the client Javascript running in the browser. That client Javascript receives the result and can then act on it, inserting data into the page, making the browser go to a new web page, prompting the user, etc...
There are some other ways that the web page javascript can communicate with the server such as webSocket connections, but we'll put those aside for now as they are just more ways for remote communication to happen - the structure of the communication doesn't really change.
how is it possible to link my back-end to my front end html/css page and use my NodeJS functions as scripts?
You can't directly use your nodejs functions as scripts in the front-end. You can make Ajax calls to the server and ask the server to execute it's own server code on your behalf to carry out some operation or retrieve some data.
If appropriate, you can also insert scripts into the web page and run Javascript directly in the browser, but whether you can do that for your particular situation depends entirely upon what the scripts are doing. If the scripts are accessing some resource that is only available from the server (like a database or a server storage system), then you won't be able to run those types of scripts in the browser. You will have to use ajax calls to ask the server to run them for you and then retrieve the results.
I have a website running on a node.js (via express) server that's hosted on Heroku. Currently if I'm on the website and I deploy a new build, my webpage will not automatically refresh once the deploy is built. I have to manually refresh the page.
How can I make any pages that are open reload automatically when a new deploy is built?
The client would need to get data from the server on the current app version or start time.
{
"version": "1.1.0",
"start_time": 1510548486047
}
An API endpoint like GET /api/v1/status polled with AJAX or a websocket message could be sent out on connection to return the data. Socket.IO is probably the easiest to get started with as it takes care of the client side.
The client side javascript can then decide on what criteria in the response warrants a page reload.
There's a lengthier answer if you want to hot reload javascript in particular.
I am making a webapplication with multiple pages using nodejs, express & socket.io. One of the features is push notifications. This means socket.io should be running on every page. Connecting to socket.io on every page load takes a lot of time, which slows down the app.
Is there a way to keep the connection to the socket open?
One way would be to use ajax to render different pages inside my root page, but I think this will over complicate the app.
Is there a better way to implement this?
Are you sure you're handling the client side the right way ?
If you have a single page application, the browser should almost never reload completely the page. You should be using some client-side framework to handle SPA mechanisms (routing, templating, etc) like angularjs/backbone/ember/etc...
With a well formated SPA you load your app only once and it is kept alive without page reload as long as the browser tab is opened. So you weboscket would be created also only once. You shouldn't have any problem of this kind, your server side code is OK, it's just that you're doing it wrong client-side.
By the way, if you want to do handle only push data, you should take a look at the Server Sent Events, which is simplier/lighter that a full-duplex implementation like socket.io (which is a bit heavy)