PrimeFaces push to OmniFaces push migration questions - jsf

Question

Since PrimeFaces push is going to be discontinued, I started to migrate to OmniFaces push. For notification purposes it's all working as expected, but I have a chat on my application where I'm missing two things in OmniFaces:
1) Change the user of the socket on demand. I require this for private conversations. On PrimeFaces I create a channel for each conversation based on the logged users id, and I pass it to the connect method of their socket component. With OmniFaces I tried to place the socket component inside a PrimeFaces output panel, bind the user property to a view scoped bean, update the panel on a ajax request and on the oncomplete event call OmniFaces.Push.open('channelName'), but I can see on the SocketObserver class(from the showcase) that the user has not been updated. As a workaround I created the channel using the logged user id as user, and if someone different from the person that he is talking at the moment sends a message, I ignore it at the JavaScript callback instead of appending it.
2) When I don't specify the user on PushContext.send, I'd like that the message was sent to everyone connected on the channel, similar to "/channel/*" on PrimeFaces. My requirement with this is to update the list off online/offline users off this chat application. A a workaround I could create a separate channel for these notifications, but as the application don't require this to work, I preferred to check here first.
I'll add code if necessary, but first I'd like to check if these concepts are present in OmniFaces push.
Thanks

Answer 1

It was indeed not possible to change the <o:socket user="#{...}"> value while staying in the same JSF view (ajax updates, etc). As per issue 472, it has been improved in OmniFaces 3.2-SNAPSHOT.
Any dynamic change in value of <o:socket user="#{...}"> during any ajax request in the same JSF view will now be reflected in push behavior.
In other words, below construct will now be possible:
<h:form>
<h:selectOneMenu value="#{bean.chat}">
<f:selectItems value="#{bean.chats}" />
<f:ajax render="#form" />
<h:selectOneMenu>
...
<o:socket channel="chat" user="#{bean.chat.id}" />
</h:form>

Answer 2

If you start by using the user attribute on the o:socket like in the example
<o:socket channel="sess" scope="session" user="#{pushTestUser}" />
1) seems possible by using the 'user id' as can be seen in the showcase push test page
From http://showcase.omnifaces.org/push/socket:
#Inject #Push
private PushContext someChannel;
public void sendMessage(Object message, User recipientUser) {
Long recipientUserId = recipientUser.getId();
someChannel.send(message, recipientUserId);
}
In this example the pass the User which is an 'example' object that could be your own or whatever. In the showcase the user is passed on by binding the id to an input field, but that could be done server-side as well. Up to you
2) seems possible with sending messages to the generic channel or even groups as can be seen in http://showcase.omnifaces.org/push/socket.
#Inject #Push
private PushContext someChannel;
public void sendMessage(Object message, Group recipientGroup) {
Collection<Long> recipientUserIds = recipientGroup.getUserIds();
someChannel.send(message, recipientUserIds);
}
The group here is an example Object that could be your own, it could be passed from the 'frontend' or just read in the backend somewhere. It just needs to contain id's of users (can be mapped guids, does not need to be internal user id's) that are subscribed to the channel. All are just example methods.
So both seem possible in my opinion.