Is there a way to do the following in a SPA:
Add User
Update list of users, for all other logged in users, with the added user if they are in the User List Module of the application. Do this without a chron job constantly checking if there is a new user.
Almost like forcing a response without a Request. Is this a Unicorn?
I am trying to see if there is an efficient way of doing this.
Technologies are NodeJS, Express, and React on the client.
You could try setting up a websocket connection between your logged in users and your server. That way, you would be able to push a change (like a new user being added) to all your clients. However, all the clients would still need to be constantly online. Try looking into socket.io as a gentle introduction to websockets.
You could also try looking into WebRTC and other P2P web technologies, though I'm not sure if that would help you in any way.
Related
Bots are amazing, unless you're Google Analytics
After many months of learning to host my own Discord bot, I finally figured it out! I now have a node server running on my localhost that sends and receives data from my Discord server; it works great. I can do all kinds of the things I want to with my Discord bot.
Given that I work with analytics everyday, one project I want to figure out is how to send data to Google Analytics (specifically GA4) from this node server.
NOTE: I have had success in sending data to my Universal Analytics property. However, as awesome as that was to finally see pageviews coming into, it was equally heartbreaking to recall that Google will be getting rid of Universal Analytics in July of this year.
I have tried the following options:
GET/POST requests to the collect endpoint
This option presented itself as impossible from the get-go. In order to send a request to the collection endpoint, a client_id must be sent along with the request itself. And this client_id is something that must be generated using Google's client id algorithm. So, I can't just make one up.
If you consider this option possible, please let me know why.
Install googleapis npm package
At first, I thought I could just install the googleapis package and be ready to go, but that idea fell on its face immediately too. With this package, I can't send data to GA, I can only read with it.
Find and install a GTM npm package
There are GTM npm packages out there, but I quickly found out that they all require there to be a window object, which is something my node server would not have because it isn't a browser.
How I did this for Universal Analytics
My biggest goal is to do this without using Python, Java, C++ or any other low level languages. Because, that route would require me to learn new languages. Surely it's possible with NodeJS alone... no?
I eventually stumbled upon the idea of actually hosting a webpage as some sort of pseudo-proxy that would send data from the page to GA when accessed by something like a page scraper. It was simple. I created an HTML file that has Google Tag Manager installed on it, and all I had to do was use the puppeteer npm package.
It isn't perfect, but it works and I can use Google Tag Manager to handle and manipulate input, which is wonderful.
Unfortunately, this same method will not work for GA4 because GA4 automatically excludes all identified bot traffic automatically, and there is no way to turn that setting off. It is a very useful feature for GA4, giving it quite a bit more integrity than UA, and I'm not trying to get around that fact, but it is now the Bane of my entire goal.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9888366?hl=en
Where to go from here?
I'm nearly at the end of my wits on figuring this one out. So, either an npm package exists out there that I haven't found yet, or this is a futile project.
Does anyone have any experience in sending data from NodeJS to GA4? (or even GTM?) How did you do it?
...and this client_id is something that must be generated using Google's client id algorithm. So, I can't just make one up...
Why, of course you can. GA4 generates it pretty much the same as UA does. You don't need anything from google to do it.
Besides, instead of mimicking just requests to the collect endpoint, you may just wanna go the MP route right away: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/ga4 The links #dockeryZ gave, work perfectly fine. Maybe try opening them in incognito, or in a different browser? Maybe you have a plugin blocking analytics urls.
Moreover, you don't really need to reinvent the bicycle. Node already has a few packages to send events to GA4, here's one looking good: https://www.npmjs.com/package/ga4-mp?activeTab=readme
Or you can just use gtag directly to send events. I see a lot of people doing it even on the front-end: https://www.npmjs.com/package/ga-gtag Gtag has a whole api not described in there. Here's more on gtag: https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/gtagjs/reference Note how the library allows you to set the client id there.
The only caveat there is that you'll have to track client ids and session ids manually. Shouldn't be too bad though. Oh, and you will have to redefine the concept of a pageview, I guess. Well, the obvious one is whenever people post in the chan that is different from the previous post in a session. Still, this will have to be defined in the code.
Don't worry about google's bot traffic detection. It's really primitive. Just make sure your useragent doesn't scream "bot" in it. Make something better up.
Context
I am working on a React webapp which has to do the following :
Users access to a webpage using one common URL (about 10 thousands users max)
There's a second URL for "admins".
Each admin can create a "room" and transmit the room ID to some users (max 40 user per room). The room will be open for 2h max.
Once users access the room, they can transmit infos by clicking on a button (like Task 1 done by clicking on a button next to Task 1)
I'm thinking also about adding a chat where users can chat with the admin of the room.
This webapp will be hosted on an Apache server which has already other apps in it.
Issue / Solutions ?
I'm trying to figure out which tools (database, websocket) I should use for this project and I would like some feedback considering the relevance of my initial plan (and suggestions for improvements).
Server : using node.js and the ws library (I'd like to avoid socket.io which seems a bit heavy) I can handle the communication between users and admin. From what I remember I will have to do some configuration on the Apache server for node.js to work.
Database : Unfortunately I can't use databases like Firebase and I was thinking about using a database which I'm already using on my server (MariaDB) to create a database for each room, storing which task was done by which user, and also the messages sent from a user to an admin. But I've seen a tutorial on how to make a Chat Application in React, which was using LocalStorage instead of a database.
Safety : I'd say that this kind of app can have serious safety issue, but have no idea if some tools can prevent the most common attacks...
Conclusion
So, all in all, I'm thinking about using ReactJS + node.js + ws library + LocalStorage instead of a DB, all of this on an Apache Server. Does it seems like a mildly convenient solution for this project.
I realize that my question is a bit far fetched, but I don't have the experience to know the tools for such a project.
Thanking you all in advance.
Have small app (My first Node js App), where I want add changing real-time content.
For example I have a common url which have list of content link, when user click on particular link it will open its correspondence link.
I have teacher and student role in the app so if teacher open the specific content(From the common url page) then it will automatically open that content for all student who have common url.
Please give me any Idea to implement this functionality and please tell me any plugin who have same functionality for real time content change.
One way, probably the easiest would be to use websockets, an easily manageable choice is socket.io npm package. What makes websockets different from http requests is the direction of the data flow. While http is pull based, meaning that a request has to be made to the server in order to get a response, websockets - once the connection is established - are or at least can be push based, meaning that the server could push out content without having to get a request from the client. In your situation, the teacher and the studens would all have an active websocket connection with the server. When the teacher clicked on a certain view, it would push the view’s data requirements to the students without any interaction from their side and the view would update on their screens according to the pushed data.
Look into how websockets work and try to experiment with a basic socket.io setup.
I want to develop an attendance management page where I want to update my MongoDB database every time when the user leaves the page.
I found unload function in some answers, but cannot realize how to use it in Node.js.
How can I do this using Node.js framework in PhpStorm?
You would have to do it from server side, sending request from client before he leaves the page is a bad approach. There are many ways how client can disconnect without sending any request, like connection lost, killing process etc.
Maybe consider different approach, like sending an ajax request as an indication that user is still on page?
Or you could look around for existing solutions, maybe something like Using node.js to display number of current users
could help.
I'm trying to build an app that uses node/socket.io for a scorekeeper to update a form on a webpage (home/away/time) and have those results stored on the server for all clients to receive.
I'm a relatively new to node and socket.io, so would this be the best way to solve this problem?
Thanks for any suggestions.
Not sure if I understood the question, however if you have an online form and you need to push notifications from the server to the clients (i.e. they see updates without having to click or reload the page), you can use socket.io, yes.