So on a site like, say, stack overflow parts of the page update when things happen like your reputation increase. How do they do that lol? Does a script check from time to time or is it a push notification somehow?
About 2 years ago stackexchange started using web sockets as stated here:
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125677/new-feature-real-time-updates-to-questions-answers-and-inbox
If you take a look at the stackoverflow site source you will see that a JavaScript function subscribes to a web socket server.
There are many different approaches to that technology now. Microsoft for example introduced SignalR (http://signalr.net/) which degrades gracefully to older browser too by switching to other technologies where sockets don't work like long polling (asking every X seconds if changes are available).
You as a Python guy would probably start looking at something like: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/websockets/1.0
Have fun with web sockets!
If I didn't want to use web sockets, I would do it like this:
Have the server maintain a queue of notifications for a session or user or whatever context you want.
Have a URL for fetching such notifications.
When a client tries to GET that URL, and there are notifications available in the queue, return them immediately.
Otherwise, have the HTTP connection block until there are notifications queued.
On the client, side, then; simply try to GET the notification URL over and over again. Normally, the connection will sit blocking for data to read, but I don't see that this should be a problem.
I would think this should be easier to implement on the server side than web sockets are, since the HTTP server doesn't have to support any special HTTP extensions. On the other hand, depending on the HTTP server you're using, each such open connection may be using a thread or other system resource that you want to use sparingly.
Related
I'm trying to learn Node.js and adequate design approaches.
I've implemented a little API server (using express) that fetches a set of data from several remote sites, according to client requests that use the API.
This process can take some time (several fecth / await), so I want the user to know how is his request doing. I've read about socket.io / websockets but maybe that's somewhat an overkill solution for this case.
So what I did is:
For each client request, a requestID is generated and returned to the client.
With that ID, the client can query the API (via another endpoint) to know his request status at any time.
Using setTimeout() on the client page and some DOM manipulation, I can update and display the current request status every X, like a polling approach.
Although the solution works fine, even with several clients connecting concurrently, maybe there's a better solution?. Are there any caveats I'm not considering?
TL;DR The approach you're using is just fine, although it may not scale very well. Websockets are a different approach to solve the same problem, but again, may not scale very well.
You've identified what are basically the only two options for real-time (or close to it) updates on a web site:
polling the server - the client requests information periodically
using Websockets - the server can push updates to the client when something happens
There are a couple of things to consider.
How important are "real time" updates? If the user can wait several seconds (or longer), then go with polling.
What sort of load can the server handle? If load is a concern, then Websockets might be the way to go.
That last question is really the crux of the issue. If you're expecting a few or a few dozen clients to use this functionality, then either solution will work just fine.
If you're expecting thousands or more to be connecting, then polling starts to become a concern, because now we're talking about many repeated requests to the server. Of course, if the interval is longer, the load will be lower.
It is my understanding that the overhead for Websockets is lower, but still can be a concern when you're talking about large numbers of clients. Again, a lot of clients means the server is managing a lot of open connections.
The way large services handle this is to design their applications in such a way that they can be distributed over many identical servers and which server you connect to is managed by a load balancer. This is true for either polling or Websockets.
I am looking for a solution to my problem. I have Node.js server serving my web application where user can log in. I want to handle a situation where one user A performs specific action and user B associated with this action gets real life notification. Is there a module that would help me or there is some other solution?
What you are describing is "server push" where the server proactively notifies a user on their site of some activity or event. In the web browser world these days, there are basically two underlying technology options:
webSocket (or some use socket.io, a more feature rich library built on top of webSocket)
server sent events (SSE).
For webSocket or socket.io, the basic idea is that the web page connects back to the server with a webSocket or socket.io connection. That connection stays live (unlike a typical http connection that would connect, send a request, receive a response, then close the connection). So, with that live connection, the server is free to send the client (which is the web page in a user's browser), notifications at any time. The Javascript in the web page then listens for incoming data on the connection and, based on what data it receives, then uses Javascript to update the currently displayed web page to show something to the user.
For server sent events, you open an event source on the client-side and that also creates a lasting connection to the server, but this connection is one-way only (the server can send events to the client) and it's completely built on HTTP. This is a newer technology than webSocket, but is more limited in purpose.
In both of these cases, the server has to keep track of which connection belongs to which user so when something interesting happens on the server, it can know which connection to notify of the event.
Another solution occasionally used is client-side polling. In this case, the web page just regularly sends an ajax call to the server asking if there are any new events. Anything new yet? Anything new yet? Anything new yet? While this is conceptually a bit simpler, it's typically far less efficient unless the polling intervals are spaced far apart, say 10 or 15 minutes which limits the timeliness of any notifications. This is because most polling requests (particularly when done rapidly) return no data and are just wasted cycles on your server.
If you want to notify userB, when both of you are simultaneously online during the action, then use websockets to pass message to a two-way channel to notify userB.
If you want to notify them whenever, regardless of online status, use a message queue.
I've implemented the chat application using node.js. The program open the connection with the client and it'll response the new message when the EventEmitter emit "recv" event.
The problem is it takes very long time to response to other request when the server hold about 3 or 4 more streams. The chrome developer tool show the status of the request as pending. it took more than 5-30 second to reach the server(localhost). I use console.log to log when the new request is received by the node.js
I have no idea why there's a long pause. Is there any limit on chrome browser, node.js or any other stuffs i should know? Does the node delay when it hold too many request at the same time and how should i measure this value? Thank you
Chrome supports six simultaneous connections per domain, so if those are already in use, it will have to wait for one to close. If you want to know what's going on, use a packet capture program to check the actual network traffic.
Browsers are limited to certain number of parallel connections which applies to the same browser context - for example when you have opened let's say more than 6 tabs, then the connections will be queued and you will see them pending.
You can avoid this limitation, for example, by using unique poll subdomain for each client connection. This is how facebook workaround this limitation, however problem is with Firefox, where this workaround doesn't work and your connections will be queued when they reach the limit even when you use unique subdomains.
Other solution might be to use HTML5 local storage where you can take advantage of StorageEvent which propagate changes also to other tabs within the same browser. This is how StackOverflow chat is done. Advantage of this approach is that you need only one polling connection with the server, but disadvantage is lack of HTML5 local storage support in older browsers or different implementation in FF version < 4.
We have an browser application (SaaS) where we would like to notify the user in the case of internet connection or server connection loss. Gmail does this very nicely, the moment I unplug the internet cable or disable network traffic it immediately says unable to reach the server and gives me a count down for retry.
What is the best way to implement something like this? Would I want the client browser issuing AJAX requests to the application server every second, or have a separate server that just reports back "alive". Scalability will be come an issue down the road.
Because GMail already checks for new e-mails every some seconds and for chat information even more frequently, it can tell without a separate request if the connection is down. If you're not using Ajax for some other sort of constant update, then yes, you would just have your server reply with some sort of "alive" signal. Note that you couldn't use a separate server because of Ajax cross-domain restrictions, however.
With the server reporting to the client (push via Comet), you have to maintain an open connection for each client. This can be pretty expensive if you have a large number of clients. Scalability can be an issue, as you mentioned. The other option is to poll. Instead of doing it every second, you can have it poll every 5-10 seconds or so.
Something else that you can look at is Web Sockets (developed as part of HTML 5), but I am not sure if it is widely supported (AFAIK only Chrome supports it).
I have a java based web application(struts 1.2). I have a requirement to display a status on the frontend (jsp). Now the status might change which my server gets notified by another server. But I want this status change to be notified to the browser.
I don't want to make a refresh at intervals. Rather I have to implement something like done in gmail chat, ie. the browser gets notified by changing events on the server.
Any ideas on how to go about this?
I was thinking on lines of opening a request to server for status, and at the server end I would hold the request and wouldn't respond back until there is a status change. Any pointers, examples on this?
Best possible solution will be to make use of XMPP protocol. It's standardized and a lot of open source solutions will get you started within minutes. You can use combination of Smack, StropheJS and Openfire to get your java based app work as desired.
There's a method called Long Polling (Comet). It basically sends a request to the server. The request thread created on the server simply waits for new data for the user, with a time limit of maybe 1 minute or more. When new data is available it is returned.
The main problem is to tackle the server-side issue, you don't want to have one thread for every user just waiting for new data. Of course you could use some asynchronous methods depending on your back-end.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology
Alternative way would be to use WebSockets. The problem is that it's not supported by all browsers today.