I am currently working on performance improvements for a React-based SPA. Most of the more basic stuff is already done so I started looking into more advanced stuff such as service workers.
The app makes quite a lot of requests on each page (most of the calls are not to REST endpoints but to an endpoint that basically makes different SQL queries to the database, hence the amount of calls). The data in the DB is not updated too often so we have a local cache for the responses, but it's obviously getting lost when a user refreshes a page. This is where I wanted to use the service worker - to keep the responses either in cache store or in IndexedDB (I went with the second option). And, of course, the cache-first approach does not fit here too well as there is still a chance that the data may become stale. So I tried to implement the stale-while-revalidate strategy: fetch the data once, then if the response for a given request is already in cache, return it, but make a real request and update the cache just in case.
I tried the approach from Jake Archibald's offline cookbook but it seems like the app is still waiting for real requests to resolve even when there is a cache entry to return from (I see those responses in Network tab).
Basically the sequence seems to be the following: request > cache entry found! > need to update the cache > only then show the data. Doing the update immediately is unnecessary in my case so I was wondering if there is any way to delay that? Or, alternatively, not to wait for the "real" response to be resolved?
Here's the code that I currently have (serializeRequest, cachePut and cacheMatch are helper functions that I have to communicate with IndexedDB):
self.addEventListener('fetch', (event) => {
// some checks to get out of the event handler if certain conditions don't match...
event.respondWith(
serializeRequest(request).then((serializedRequest) => {
return cacheMatch(serializedRequest, db.post_cache).then((response) => {
const fetchPromise = fetch(request).then((networkResponse) => {
cachePut(serializedRequest, response.clone(), db.post_cache);
return networkResponse;
});
return response || fetchPromise;
});
})
);
})
Thanks in advance!
EDIT: Can this be due to the fact that I put stuff into IndexedDB instead of cache? I am sort of forced to use IndexedDB instead of the cache because those "magic endpoints" are POST instead of GET (because of the fact they require the body) and POST cannot be inserted into the cache...
I was learning GraphQL and about to finish the tutorial and this never happened before.
The problem is that the GraphQL server keeps receiving requests after opening GraphQL Playground in the browser even though no query or mutation is made.
I see these sort of responses being returned by the server:
{
"name":"deprecated",
"description":"Marks an element of a GraphQL schema as no longer supported.",
"locations":[
"FIELD_DEFINITION",
"ENUM_VALUE"
],
"args":[
{
"name":"reason",
"description":"Explains why this element was deprecated, usually also including a suggestion for how to access supported similar data. Formatted using the Markdown syntax (as specified by [CommonMark](https://commonmark.org/).",
"type":{
"kind":"SCALAR",
"name":"String",
"ofType":null
},
"defaultValue":"\"No longer supported\""
}
]
}
This is expected behavior.
GraphQL Playground issues an introspection query to your server. It uses the result of that query to provide validation and autocompletion for your queries. Playground will send that query to your server repeatedly (every 2 seconds by default) so that if your schema changes, these changes can be immediately reflected in the UI (although there's an issue with this feature at the moment).
You can adjust the relevant settings (click on the settings icon in the top right corner of the Playground UI) to either change the polling frequency or turn it off entirely:
'schema.polling.enable': true, // enables automatic schema polling
'schema.polling.endpointFilter': '*localhost*', // endpoint filter for schema polling
'schema.polling.interval': 2000, // schema polling interval in ms
However, the behavior you're seeing is only related to Playground so it's harmless and won't impact any other clients connecting to your server.
I can't pass tests and system don't tell me which one. I receive only:
{ "bytes": "CAEQARABEAEQARABEAEQARABEAEQAQ" }
Now I know that if I passed 10 tests 10 symbols changed.
If I send wrong solution I received:
{ "bytes": "CAEQABAAEAAQABAAEAAQABAAEAAQAA" }
And my tests told me that last test cases don't send any feedback.
This is a bug on Google's end, I'm getting it, too. Hopefully it will be resolved quickly, meanwhile use the feedback command to let Google know of the problem.
I have a question involving a "timeout" when sending an HTTPS "GET" request using the ServerXMLHTTP object.
In order to fool the object to send the request with the logged in user's id and password, I set it up to use a dummy proxy and then excluded the domain of the URL (on the intranet). So variable url_to_get contains .mydomain.com, while the proxy address is actually "not.used.com".
// JScript source code
HTTP_RequestObject = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0");
// Using logged in username authentication
HTTP_RequestObject.open("GET", url_to_get, false);
HTTP_RequestObject.setProxy(2, "not.used.com", "*.mydomain.com");
try
{
HTTP_RequestObject.send();
}
catch (e)
{
}
In the catch block, I log an exception of "(0x80072EE2) The operation timed out". This is timestamped 1 to 2 seconds after a log message right before the open.
A retry will work as expected, and it can do it over and over again. Is this something on the server side? Or is it a result of the proxy?
Well this was painful and embarassing. I figured out the root cause of the issue I was seeing with the timeout. I had set the timeouts to "defaults" that were 3 orders of magnitude smaller than the real defaults. So even when I increased them to what I thought were really large values, I was still shorter than the defaults.
I had skimmed through the wording on the Microsoft page describing the setTimouts() method and misinterpreted the timebase of the parameters. I assumed seconds while it was actually milliseconds.
During the process of debugging this issue, I duplicated the code using the alternative COM object, "WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1", and in verifying the equivalent API, SetTimeouts(), discovered the faux pas.
I did learn a few things in the process, so all is not lost, "WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1" has a SetAutoLogonPolicy() [3] method that allows me to skip the hokey "proxy" foolishness required with "Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0" to force it to send the user's credentials to an intranet server. I also fiddled with Fiddler [4] and learned enough to be dangerous!
Hopefully someone else can learn from my mistake and find this useful in debugging their own issue in the future.
Here are some inline links since I don't have enough rep to post more than two:
[3] : msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa384050%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
[4] : fiddler2.com
Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0 can be used via a proxy. It took me a while but persistence paid off. I moved from WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1 to Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0 at the advice of Microsoft.
Where varHTTP is your object reference to Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0 you can use
varHTTP.setproxy 2, ProxyServerName, "BypassList"
Hope this helps and you pursue onwards with Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0.
I have read some posts about this topic and the answers are comet, reverse ajax, http streaming, server push, etc.
How does incoming mail notification on Gmail works?
How is GMail Chat able to make AJAX requests without client interaction?
I would like to know if there are any code references that I can follow to write a very simple example. Many posts or websites just talk about the technology. It is hard to find a complete sample code. Also, it seems many methods can be used to implement the comet, e.g. Hidden IFrame, XMLHttpRequest. In my opinion, using XMLHttpRequest is a better choice. What do you think of the pros and cons of different methods? Which one does Gmail use?
I know it needs to do it both in server side and client side.
Is there any PHP and Javascript sample code?
The way Facebook does this is pretty interesting.
A common method of doing such notifications is to poll a script on the server (using AJAX) on a given interval (perhaps every few seconds), to check if something has happened. However, this can be pretty network intensive, and you often make pointless requests, because nothing has happened.
The way Facebook does it is using the comet approach, rather than polling on an interval, as soon as one poll completes, it issues another one. However, each request to the script on the server has an extremely long timeout, and the server only responds to the request once something has happened. You can see this happening if you bring up Firebug's Console tab while on Facebook, with requests to a script possibly taking minutes. It is quite ingenious really, since this method cuts down immediately on both the number of requests, and how often you have to send them. You effectively now have an event framework that allows the server to 'fire' events.
Behind this, in terms of the actual content returned from those polls, it's a JSON response, with what appears to be a list of events, and info about them. It's minified though, so is a bit hard to read.
In terms of the actual technology, AJAX is the way to go here, because you can control request timeouts, and many other things. I'd recommend (Stack overflow cliche here) using jQuery to do the AJAX, it'll take a lot of the cross-compability problems away. In terms of PHP, you could simply poll an event log database table in your PHP script, and only return to the client when something happens? There are, I expect, many ways of implementing this.
Implementing:
Server Side:
There appear to be a few implementations of comet libraries in PHP, but to be honest, it really is very simple, something perhaps like the following pseudocode:
while(!has_event_happened()) {
sleep(5);
}
echo json_encode(get_events());
The has_event_happened function would just check if anything had happened in an events table or something, and then the get_events function would return a list of the new rows in the table? Depends on the context of the problem really.
Don't forget to change your PHP max execution time, otherwise it will timeout early!
Client Side:
Take a look at the jQuery plugin for doing Comet interaction:
Project homepage: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/Comet
Google Code: https://code.google.com/archive/p/jquerycomet/ - Appears to have some sort of example usage in the subversion repository.
That said, the plugin seems to add a fair bit of complexity, it really is very simple on the client, perhaps (with jQuery) something like:
function doPoll() {
$.get("events.php", {}, function(result) {
$.each(result.events, function(event) { //iterate over the events
//do something with your event
});
doPoll();
//this effectively causes the poll to run again as
//soon as the response comes back
}, 'json');
}
$(document).ready(function() {
$.ajaxSetup({
timeout: 1000*60//set a global AJAX timeout of a minute
});
doPoll(); // do the first poll
});
The whole thing depends a lot on how your existing architecture is put together.
Update
As I continue to recieve upvotes on this, I think it is reasonable to remember that this answer is 4 years old. Web has grown in a really fast pace, so please be mindful about this answer.
I had the same issue recently and researched about the subject.
The solution given is called long polling, and to correctly use it you must be sure that your AJAX request has a "large" timeout and to always make this request after the current ends (timeout, error or success).
Long Polling - Client
Here, to keep code short, I will use jQuery:
function pollTask() {
$.ajax({
url: '/api/Polling',
async: true, // by default, it's async, but...
dataType: 'json', // or the dataType you are working with
timeout: 10000, // IMPORTANT! this is a 10 seconds timeout
cache: false
}).done(function (eventList) {
// Handle your data here
var data;
for (var eventName in eventList) {
data = eventList[eventName];
dispatcher.handle(eventName, data); // handle the `eventName` with `data`
}
}).always(pollTask);
}
It is important to remember that (from jQuery docs):
In jQuery 1.4.x and below, the XMLHttpRequest object will be in an
invalid state if the request times out; accessing any object members
may throw an exception. In Firefox 3.0+ only, script and JSONP
requests cannot be cancelled by a timeout; the script will run even if
it arrives after the timeout period.
Long Polling - Server
It is not in any specific language, but it would be something like this:
function handleRequest () {
while (!anythingHappened() || hasTimedOut()) { sleep(2); }
return events();
}
Here, hasTimedOut will make sure your code does not wait forever, and anythingHappened, will check if any event happend. The sleep is for releasing your thread to do other stuff while nothing happens. The events will return a dictionary of events (or any other data structure you may prefer) in JSON format (or any other you prefer).
It surely solves the problem, but, if you are concerned about scalability and perfomance as I was when researching, you might consider another solution I found.
Solution
Use sockets!
On client side, to avoid any compatibility issues, use socket.io. It tries to use socket directly, and have fallbacks to other solutions when sockets are not available.
On server side, create a server using NodeJS (example here). The client will subscribe to this channel (observer) created with the server. Whenever a notification has to be sent, it is published in this channel and the subscriptor (client) gets notified.
If you don't like this solution, try APE (Ajax Push Engine).
Hope I helped.
According to a slideshow about Facebook's Messaging system, Facebook uses the comet technology to "push" message to web browsers. Facebook's comet server is built on the open sourced Erlang web server mochiweb.
In the picture below, the phrase "channel clusters" means "comet servers".
Many other big web sites build their own comet server, because there are differences between every company's need. But build your own comet server on a open source comet server is a good approach.
You can try icomet, a C1000K C++ comet server built with libevent. icomet also provides a JavaScript library, it is easy to use as simple as:
var comet = new iComet({
sign_url: 'http://' + app_host + '/sign?obj=' + obj,
sub_url: 'http://' + icomet_host + '/sub',
callback: function(msg){
// on server push
alert(msg.content);
}
});
icomet supports a wide range of Browsers and OSes, including Safari(iOS, Mac), IEs(Windows), Firefox, Chrome, etc.
Facebook uses MQTT instead of HTTP. Push is better than polling.
Through HTTP we need to poll the server continuously but via MQTT server pushes the message to clients.
Comparision between MQTT and HTTP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KNPXPmx88E
Note: my answers best fits for mobile devices.
One important issue with long polling is error handling.
There are two types of errors:
The request might timeout in which case the client should reestablish the connection immediately. This is a normal event in long polling when no messages have arrived.
A network error or an execution error. This is an actual error which the client should gracefully accept and wait for the server to come back on-line.
The main issue is that if your error handler reestablishes the connection immediately also for a type 2 error, the clients would DOS the server.
Both answers with code sample miss this.
function longPoll() {
var shouldDelay = false;
$.ajax({
url: 'poll.php',
async: true, // by default, it's async, but...
dataType: 'json', // or the dataType you are working with
timeout: 10000, // IMPORTANT! this is a 10 seconds timeout
cache: false
}).done(function (data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
// do something with data...
}).fail(function (jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown ) {
shouldDelay = textStatus !== "timeout";
}).always(function() {
// in case of network error. throttle otherwise we DOS ourselves. If it was a timeout, its normal operation. go again.
var delay = shouldDelay ? 10000: 0;
window.setTimeout(longPoll, delay);
});
}
longPoll(); //fire first handler