Node.js and understanding how response works - node.js

Question

I'm really new to node.js so please bear with me if I'm making a obvious mistake.
To understand node.js, i'm trying to create a webserver that basically:
1) update the page with appending "hello world" everytime the root url (localhost:8000/) is hit.
2) user can go to another url (localhost:8000/getChatData) and it will display all the data built up from the url (localhost:8000/) being triggered
Problem I'm experiencing:
1) I'm having issue with displaying that data on the rendered page. I have a timer that should call get_data() ever second and update the screen with the data variable that stores the appended output. Specifically this line below response.simpleText(200, data); isn't working correctly.
The file
// Load the node-router library by creationix
var server = require('C:\\Personal\\ChatPrototype\\node\\node-router').getServer();
var data = null;
// Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World the root request
server.get("/", function (request, response) {
if(data != null)
{
data = data + "hello world\n";
}
else
{
data = "hellow world\n";
}
response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
console.log(data);
response.simpleText(200, data);
response.end();
});
// Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World the root request
server.get("/getChatData", function (request, response) {
setInterval( function() { get_data(response); }, 1000 );
});
function get_data(response)
{
if(data != null)
{
response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
response.simpleText(200, data);
console.log("data:" + data);
response.end();
}
else
{
console.log("no data");
}
}
// Listen on port 8080 on localhost
server.listen(8000, "localhost");
If there is a better way to do this, please let me know. The goal is to basically have a way for a server to call a url to update a variable and have another html page to report/display the updated data dynamically every second.
Thanks,
D

Answer 1

The client server model works by a client sending a request to the server and the server in return sends a response. The server can not send a response to the client that the client hasn't asked for. The client initiates the request. Therefore you cannot have the server changing the response object on an interval.
The client will not get these changes to the requests. How something like this is usually handled as through AJAX the initial response from the server sends Javascript code to the client that initiates requests to the server on an interval.

Answer 2

setTimeout accepts function without parameter which is obvious as it will be executed later in time. All values you need in that function should be available at the point of time. In you case, the response object that you are trying to pass, is a local instance which has scope only inside the server.get's callback (where you set the setTimeout).
There are several ways you can resolve this issue. you can keep a copy of the response instance in the outer scope where get_data belongs or you can move the get_data entirely inside and remove setTimeout. The first solution is not recommended as if getChatData is called several times in 1sec the last copy will be prevailing.
But my suggestion would be to keep the data in database and show it once getChatData is called.