I want to implement an application based on Scala and Play! 2.1 where all data transport is handled through websockets in real-time. Since the application supports collaboration of several users, I want to be able to call methods on a) the server, b) one client, c) all clients.
For example, let's say there are Users Bob, Jane and Carl.
Carl creates a "note" which is sent through the socket and then, if successfully stored, added to the DOM through basic Javascript (let's say addNote(note)) on all clients.
A sample call could look like this:
// sends message type createCard to server, takes <form id="card"> as data and receives a JSON object as response
mysocket.send("createCard", $('#card').serialize(), { success: function(data) {
var card = data.card
mysocket.allClients().addCard(card); // appends <div id="card"> to DOM
});
Is this possible or am I going about this the wrong way entirely?
See SignalJ - a port of SignalR ideas to PlayFramework and Akka.
Related
I'm trying to integrate the schedule component from Syncfusion. The component has a URL adaptor to connect to the controller; GetData() and Batch() for Crud Operations. Batch has a payload indicating what actions to perform. At the end, the Batch method would requery the database and send data identical to GetData() back.
Unfortunately, there is no built-in method to notify clients of anything going wrong - whether there is an exception, server-side validation kicks in or similar.
What I'd like to do is to add a placeholder outside the compentent to receive and display server messages (be it a notification popup, a or whatever.
Since I can't influence the Ajax call itself, I was wondering if I had to get started with SignalR (still in beta for .Net Core 2 as far as I know), or if I may have missed something more obvious? I have read a lot about push notifications etc - but these are not quite what I'm after, it'd be slightly over the top I think.
To summarise, let's say I have
<div id="messages"></div>
<div id="component">HereGoesTheScheduleWhichICantDoMuchWith</div>
Now in the Batch() method, it would be great to call a SendMessage("Sorry,you can't do this") - the text of which would ideally then appear in the messages-div.
How would you go about this?
I have now solved this, using SignalR (currently 1.0.0-alpha2-final) and for a nice view on the Client, PNotify.
Presently, it only works if the client is authenticated, if it needs to work anonymously you'd need to figure out a way to track SignalR's connection id.
On the page with the Syncfusion Schedule component, I connect to SignalR.
let connection = new signalR.HubConnection("/signalr", { transport: signalR.TransportType.ServerSentEvents });
connection.on("Notify",
(title, message) => {
new PNotify({
title: title,
text: message
});
});
connection.start();
The Hub (SignalRHub : Hub) creates a notification group for the user connecting:
public override Task OnConnectedAsync()
{
Groups.AddAsync(Context.ConnectionId, Context.User.Identity.Name);
return base.OnConnectedAsync();
}
The associated controller gets IHubContext<SignalRHub> signalRHub injected.
Now in the Batch-Method for the Syncfusion component, which returns Json and can't itself carry messages or notifications, you can notify the user:
_signalRHub.Clients.Group(User.Identity.Name).InvokeAsync("Notify", "A title", "A message");
In my particular case, I'm sending over an object to control layout, animation and popup duration for PNotify (e.g. longer for an exception to allow copy/paste etc) - as you please. Returning an object could be done using:
_signalRHub.Clients.Group(User.Identity.Name).InvokeAsync("Notify", JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new { title = "Some Title", message = "notification", type = "notice"}););
Obviously, connection.on("Notify"... needs to be changed accordingly.
I hope this is clear enough and might help someone else.
I'm looking to develop a chat application with Pubnub where I want to make sure all the chat messages that are send is been stored in the database and also want to send messages in chat.
I found out that I can use the Parse with pubnub to provide storage options, But I'm not sure how to setup those two in a way where the messages and images send in the chat are been stored in the database.
Anyone have done this before with pubnub and parse? Are there any other easy options available to use with pubnub instead of using parse?
Sutha,
What you are seeking is not a trivial solution unless you are talking about a limited number of end users. So I wouldn't say there are no "easy" solutions, but there are solutions.
The reason is your server would need to listen (subscribe) to every chat channel that is active and store the messages being sent into your database. Imagine your app scaling to 1 million users (doesn't even need to get that big, but that number should help you realize how this can get tricky to scale where several server instances are listening to channels in a non-overlapping manner or with overlap but using a server queue implementation and de-duping messages).
That said, yes, there are PubNub customers that have implemented such a solution - Parse not being the key to making this happen, by the way.
You have three basic options for implementing this:
Implement a solution that will allow many instances of your server to subscribe to all of the channels as they become active and store the messages as they come in. There are a lot of details to making this happen so if you are not up to this then this is not likely where you want to go.
There is a way to monitor all channels that become active or inactive with PubNub Presence webhooks (enable Presence on your keys). You would use this to keep a list of all channels that your server would use to pull history (enable Storage & Playback on your keys) from in an on-demand (not completely realtime) fashion.
For every channel that goes active or inactive, your server will receive these events via the REST call (and endpoint that you implement on your server - your Parse server in this case):
channel active: record "start chat" timetoken in your Parse db
channel inactive: record "end chat" timetoken in your Parse db
the inactive event is the kickoff for a process that uses start/end timetokens that you recorded for that channel to get history from for channel from PubNub: pubnub.history({channel: channelName, start:startTT, end:endTT})
you will need to iterate on this history call until you receive < 100 messages (100 is the max number of messages you can retrieve at a time)
as you retrieve these messages you will save them to your Parse db
New Presence Webhooks have been added:
We now have webhooks for all presence events: join, leave, timeout, state-change.
Finally, you could just save each message to Parse db on success of every pubnub.publish call. I am not a Parse expert and barely know all of its capabilities but I believe they have some sort or store local then sync to cloud db option (like StackMob when that was a product), but even if not, you will save msg to Parse cloud db directly.
The code would look something like this (not complete, likely errors, figure it out or ask PubNub support for details) in your JavaScript client (on the browser).
var pubnub = PUBNUB({
publish_key : your_pub_key,
subscribe_key : your_sub_key
});
var msg = ... // get the message form your UI text box or whatever
pubnub.publish({
// this is some variable you set up when you enter a chat room
channel: chat_channel,
message: msg
callback: function(event){
// DISCLAIMER: code pulled from [Parse example][4]
// but there are some object creation details
// left out here and msg object is not
// fully fleshed out in this sample code
var ChatMessage = Parse.Object.extend("ChatMessage");
var chatMsg = new ChatMessage();
chatMsg.set("message", msg);
chatMsg.set("user", uuid);
chatMsg.set("channel", chat_channel);
chatMsg.set("timetoken", event[2]);
// this ChatMessage object can be
// whatever you want it to be
chatMsg.save();
}
error: function (error) {
// Handle error here, like retry until success, for example
console.log(JSON.stringify(error));
}
});
You might even just store the entire set of publishes (on both ends of the conversation) based on time interval, number of publishes or size of total data but be careful because either user could exit the chat and the browser without notice and you will fail to save. So the per publish save is probably best practice if a bit noisy.
I hope you find one of these techniques as a means to get started in the right direction. There are details left out so I expect you will have follow up questions.
Just some other links that might be helpful:
http://blog.parse.com/learn/building-a-killer-webrtc-video-chat-app-using-pubnub-parse/
http://www.pubnub.com/blog/realtime-collaboration-sync-parse-api-pubnub/
https://www.pubnub.com/knowledge-base/discussion/293/how-do-i-publish-a-message-from-parse
And we have a PubNub Parse SDK, too. :)
I have the following situation, where the already sent headers problem happens, when sending multiple request from the server to the client via AJAX:
It is something I expected since I opted to go with AJAX, instead of sockets. Is there is other way around to exchange the data between the server and the client, like using browserify to translate an emitter script for the client? I suppose that I can't escape the sockets, so I will take advice about simpler library, as sockets.io seems too complex for such a small operation.
//-------------------------
Update:
Here is the node.js code as requested.
var maxRunning = 1;
var test_de_rf = ['rennen','ausgehen'];
function callHandler(word, cb) {
console.log("word is - " + word);
gender.gender_function_rf( word , function (result_rf) {
console.log(result_rf);
res.send(result_rf);// Here I send data back to the ajax call
setTimeout(function() { cb(null);
}, 3000);
});
}
async.eachLimit(test_de_rf, maxRunning, function(item, done) {
callHandler(item, function(err) {
if (err) throw new Error(err);
done();
});
}, function(err) {
if (err) throw new Error(err);
console.log('done');
});
res.send() sends and finishes an http response. You can only call it once per request because the request is finished and done after calling that. It is a fairly high level way of sending a response (does it all at once in one call).
If you wanted to have several different functions contributing to a response, you could use the lower level functions on the http object such as res.setHeader(), res.writeHead(), res.write() (which you can call multiple times) and res.end() (which indicates the end of the response).
You can use the standard webSocket API in the browser and get webSocket module for server-side support or you can use socket.io which offers both client and server support and a number of higher level functions (such as automatic reconnect, automatic failover to http polling if webSockets are not supported, etc...).
All that said, if what you really want is the ability to just send some data from server to client whenever you want, then a webSocket is really the better way to go. This is a persistent connection, is supported by all modern browsers and allows the server to send data unsolicited to the client at any time. I'd hardly say socket.io is complex. The doc isn't particularly great at explaining things (not uncommon in the open source world as the node.js doc isn't particularly great either). But, I've always been able to figure advanced things out by just looking at a few runtime data structures in the debugger and/or looking at the source code.
Is there a way to send events from the server to all or some clients without using collections.
I want to send events with some custom data to clients. While meteor is very good in doing this with collections, in this case the added complexity and storage its not needed.
On the server there is no need for Mongo storage or local collections.
The client only needs to be alerted that it received an event from the server and act accordingly to the data.
I know this is fairly easy with sockjs but its very difficult to access sockjs from the server.
Meteor.Error does something similar to this.
The package is now deprecated and do not work for versions >0.9
You can use the following package which is originally aim to broadcast messages from clients-server-clients
http://arunoda.github.io/meteor-streams/
No collection, no mongodb behind, usage is as follow (not tested):
stream = new Meteor.Stream('streamName'); // defined on client and server side
if(Meteor.isClient) {
stream.on("channelName", function(message) {
console.log("message:"+message);
});
}
if(Meteor.isServer) {
setInterval(function() {
stream.emit("channelName", 'This is my message!');
}, 1000);
}
You should use Collections.
The "added complexity and storage" isn't a factor if all you do is create a collection, add a single property to it and update that.
Collections are just a shape for data communication between server and client, and they happen to build on mongo, which is really nice if you want to use them like a database. But at their most basic, they're just a way of saying "I want to store some information known as X", which hooks into the publish/subscribe architecture that you should want to take advantage of.
In the future, other databases will be exposed in addition to Mongo. I could see there being a smart package at some stage that strips Collections down to their most basic functionality like you're proposing. Maybe you could write it!
I feel for #Rui and the fact of using a Collection just to send a message feel cumbersome.
At the same time, once you have several of such message to send around is convenient to have a Collection named something like settings or similar where you keep these.
Best package I have found is Streamy. It allows you to send to everybody, or just one specific user
https://github.com/YuukanOO/streamy
meteor add yuukan:streamy
Send message to everybody:
Streamy.broadcast('ddpEvent', { data: 'something happened for all' });
Listen for message on client:
// Attach an handler for a specific message
Streamy.on('ddpEvent', function(d, s) {
console.log(d.data);
});
Send message to one user (by id)
var socket = Streamy.socketsForUsers(["nJyQvECmkBSXDZEN2"])._sockets[0]
Streamy.emit('ddpEvent', { data: 'something happened for you' }, socket);
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