How does google docs do real time syncing? Websocket? - web

Applications such as google docs and notion can sync in realtime.
How is this achieved? I know websocket can do something like this.
But I didn't see any websocket traffic in the developer tool. Instead I saw get and post requests. How can this be achieved with GET/POST request?

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Subscribe/publish with Express js

I have an Express js server that supplies weather forecast information to its clients. Right now, it's basically an RPC API where the client (a python client in this case) requests different types of weather info from different endpoints. This is fine for right now, but I was thinking about implementing a subscription model. Rather than connecting to different endpoints for different information, the client could just subscribe for the info that it wants and the server would send it every so often (obviously configurable by the client).
Is there a way to do this with express? Would I have to set up a server on the client side as well to listen for the publish events?
A very good option is RabbitMQ, it's used for that right purpose.
I tried to find a good tutorial for you as a reference, however, I only find one in portuguese, but if you search around google you will find others in english.
But it's very simple, just like you want, you publish to the queue on some topic and have other clients subscribing that topic and processing the messages
Here is the link
https://medium.com/#programadriano/rabbitmq-publish-subscribe-com-node-js-9363848f58fe

Database changes notifications (Angular4 client, NodeJS server)

I'm developing an Angular 4 app that connects to a REST API developed in NodeJS/Express/MySQL. I'm looking for a way to notify any connected clients when there is a change in the database, so they reload their datasets. I've done some searches on Google but I don't know the technical term of what I'm looking for, so I didn't find anything useful.
Can someone point me some resource on this subject? Thanks!
You have two options avaliable
1)HTML5 serversent events
A server-sent event is when a web page automatically gets updates from
a server.
https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_serversentevents.asp
2)Socket.io
https://socket.io/
Based on my experience for simple realtime updates HTML5 server sent is enough
If you want to visualize changes "live", you should try websockets.
With websockets you could notify any client about any upcoming changes in data, think of it as some kind of chat between server and clients.
There's socket.io for Node.js developers and plenty of tutorials about how to set it up and get it running.
Thanks!
Time to learn some new things... I think I'll start with HTML5 Server Send Events, I think it'll be more than enough for what I need.
Cheers,

Websocket App Design

Most examples I have seen are are just small demo's and not full stack applications and they use websocket for messaging, but for any chat application there is more data then just messages...suppose like user profile, his contacts etc.
So should I use websockets for all communication between server and client or just use them for sending messages and do other things through http? If I am to use websocket for all communication how do url design of the app...since websockets don't have have any different urls like http.
You might be interested in WAMP, an officially registered WebSocket subprotocol that provides applications with WebSocket based
asynchronous, bidirectional remote procedure calls
real-time publish & subscribe notifications
Disclaimer: I am original author of WAMP and work for Tavendo.
Pretty sure you'll get the usual "it depends" answer, because, well, it depends!
If you are going to build a large application, to be used by a number of different clients in different network arrangements etc then I personally wouldn't recommend using WebSockets for everything. Why?
It's a new standard, so not all clients support it
In some network configurations WebSocket traffic may be filtered out, meaning you end up with no communications - not great
If you end up exposing an external API then HTTP is much better fitted for the job and will likely be easier to code against. There are a lot more tools out there to help you with it and styles that everyone is familiar with, like REST, to follow.
Use WebSockets when you require data being pushed from the server without the client having to poll for it, or when HTTP header overhead becomes a problem. And if you still decide to use it make sure you have a fallback mechanism (e.g. longpolling) so you don't end up with no comms.
I'm afraid I can't help you regarding WebSocket API design... given it's a new standard I don't believe the community has settled on anything just yet so you'll have to come out with your own message-based scheme.

What are webhooks in the BugHerd API and how can they be created?

I'm currently working with the BugHerd API.
Please suggest how to create webhooks. I have google understand they are new functionality in apis and they used for two way communication.
They're a way of asking a remote server to make a request of your own server when events happen on the remote server. They allow you to receive real-time events without constantly polling the server. They're basically callbacks that happen between two severs over HTTP.
As for creating them, the API is pretty clear. Make a post request to POST /api_v2/webhooks.json and include JSON in the following format:
{
"project_id":1,
"target_url":"https://app.example.com/api/bugherd_sync/project/1/task_create",
"event":"task_create"
}
You're telling it which event to hook into, and which URL their server should contact when the event occurs.

Socket.io vs AJAX Use cases

Background: I am building a web app using NodeJS + Express. Most of the communication between client and server is REST (GET and POST) calls. I would typically use AJAX XMLHttpRequest like mentioned in https://developers.google.com/appengine/articles/rpc. And I don't seem to understand how to make my RESTful service being used for Socket.io as well.
My questions are
What scenarios should I use Socket.io over AJAX RPC?
Is there a straight forward way to make them work together. At least for Expressjs style REST.
Do I have real benefits of using socket.io(if websockets are used -- TCP layer) on non real time web applications. Like a tinyurl site (where users post queries and server responds and forgets).
Also I was thinking a tricky but nonsense idea. What if I use RESTful for requests from clients and close connection from server side and do socket.emit().
Thanks in advance.
Your primary problem is that WebSockets are not request/response oriented like HTTP is. You mention REST and HTTP interchangeably, keep in mind that REST is a methodology behind designing and modeling your HTTP routes.
Your questions,
1. Socket.io would be a good scenario when you don't require a request/response format. For instance if you were building a multiplayer game in which whoever could click on more buttons won, you would send the server each click from each user, not needing a response back from the server that it registered each click. As long as the WebSocket connection is open, you can assume the message is making it to the server. Another use case is when you need a server to contact a client sporadically. An analytics page would be a good use case for WebSockets as there is no uniform pattern as to when data needs to be at the client, it could happen at anytime.
The WebSocket connection is an HTTP GET request with a special header requesting the server to upgrade it to a WebSocket connection. Distinguishing different events and message on the WebSocket connection is up to your application logic and likely won't match REST style URIs and methods (otherwise you are replication HTTP request/reply in a sense).
No.
Not sure what you mean on the last bit.
I'll just explain more about when you want to use Socket.IO and leave the in-depth explanation to Tj there.
Generally you will choose Socket.IO when performance and/or latency is a major concern and you have a site that involves users polling for data often. AJAX or long-polling is by far easier to implement, however, it can have serious performance problems in high load situations. By high-load, I mean like Facebook. Imagine millions of people loading their feed, and every minute each user is asking the server for new data. That could require some serious hardware and software to make that work well. With Socket.IO, each user could instead connect and just indefinitely wait for new data from the server as it arrives, resulting in far less overall server traffic.
Also, if you have a real-time application, Socket.IO would allow for a much better user experience while maintaining a reasonable server load. A common example is a chat room. You really don't want to have to constantly poll the server for new messages. It would be much better for the server to broadcast new messages as they are received. Although you can do it with long-polling, it can be pretty expensive in terms of server resources.

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