I'm trying to understand whether the HTML5 Web Notifications API can help me out, but I'm falling short in understanding how it works.
I'd like user_a to be able to send user_b a message within my webapp.
I'd like user_b to receive a notification of this.
Can the web notifications API help here? Does it let me specifically target a user (rather than notify everyone the site has been updated_? I can't see how I would create an alert for one person.
Can anyone help me understand a little more?
The notifications API is client side, so it needs to get events from another client-side technology. Here, read THIS: http://nodejs.org/api/. Just kidding. Node.js+socket.io is probably the best way to go here, you can emit events to one or all clients (broadcast). That's a push scenario. Or each user could be pulling their notifications from the server.
HTML5 Web Notifications API gives you ability to display desktop notifications that your application has generated.
What you are trying to achieve is a different thing and web notification is just a part of your scenario.
Depending upon how you are managing your application, for chat and messaging purpose as humbolight mentioned, you should look into node.js. it will provide you the necessary back-end to manage sending and receiving messages between users.
To notify a user that (s)he has received a message, you can opt for ajax polling on client side.
Simply create a javascript that pings the server every x seconds and checks if there is any notification or new message available for this user.
If response is successful, then you can use HTML5 notification API to show a message to user that (s)he has a new message.
The main problem with long polling is server load, and bandwidth usage even when there are no messages, and if number of users are in thousands then you can expect your server always busy responding to poll calls.
An alternate is to use Server Sent Events API, where you send a request to server and then server PUSHES the notifications/messages to the client as soon as they are available.
This reduces the unnecessary client->server polling and seems much better option in your case.
To get started you can check a good tutorial at
HTML5Rocks
What you're looking for is WebSocket. It's the technology that allows a client (browser) to open a persistent connection to the server and receive data from it at the server's whim, rather than having to "poll" the server to see if there's anything new.
Other answers here have already mentioned node.js, but Node is simply one (though arguably the best) option for implementing websockets on your server. You might also be comfortable with Ratchet, which is a websocket server library for PHP, or Tornado which is in Python.
How you handle your real-time communication is up to you. Websockets are merely the underlying technology that you can use to pass data back and forth. The client side of this will be fairly easy, but on the server side, you'll need a mechanism for websocket handlers to get information from each other. Look at tools like ZeroMQ for handling queues, and Memcached or Redis to handle large swaths of data which don't need to be stored permanently.
Related
I have seen a lot of examples on the internet of chats using web sockets and RabbitMQ (https://github.com/videlalvaro/rabbitmq-chat), however I do not understand why it is need it a message queue for a chat application.
Why it is not ok to send the message from the browser via web sockets to the server and then the server to broadcast that message to the rest of active browsers using again web sockets with broadcast method? (maybe I am missing something)
Pseudo code examples (using socket.io):
// client (browser)
socket.emit("message","my great message that will be received by all"
// server (any server can be, but let's just say that it is also written in JavaScript
socket.on("message", function(msg) {
socket.broadcast.emit(data);
});
// the rest of the browsers
socket.on("message", function(msg) {
// display on the screen the message
});
i don't think RabbitMQ should be used for a chat room, personally. at least, not in the "chat" or "room" part of the application.
unless your chat rooms don't care about history at all - and i think most do care about that - a message queue like RMQ doesn't make much sense.
you would be better off storing the message in a database and keeping a marker for each user to say what message they last saw.
now, you may end up needing something like RMQ to facilitate the process of the chat application. you can offload process from the web servers, for example, and push all messages through RMQ to a back-end service that updates the database and cache layers, for example.
this would allow you to scale the front-end web servers much faster, and support more users per web server. and that sounds like a good use of RMQ, but is not specific to chat apps. it's just good practice for scaling web apps / systems.
the key, in my experience, is that RMQ is not responsible for delivery of the messages to the users / chat rooms. that happens through websockets or similar technologies that are designed to be used per user.
Simple answer ...
For a simple chat app you don't need a queue (e.g. signalr would do exactly this without the queue).
Typically though real world applications are not just "a simple chat app", the queue might represent the current state of the room for new users joining perhaps, so the server knows what list of messages to serve up when that happens.
Also it's worth noting that message queues are often implemented when you want reliable messaging (e.g. Service bus) to ensure that all messages definitely get to where they should go even if the first attempt fails. So it's likely that the queue is included in many examples as a default primer in to later problem solving.
I may be late for the answer as the messaging domain changed rapidly in last few years. Applications like WhatsApp do not store messages in their database, and also provide E2E encryption.
Coming to RabbitMQ, they support MQTT protocol which is ideal for low latency high scalability applications. Thus using such queuing services offload the heavy work from your server and provide features like scalability and security.
uhmm I didn't understand exactly for are you looking for...
but In RabbiMQ you always publish a messages to an exchange and consume the message using a queue.
to "broadcast that message" you need to consume it.
hope it helps
I have a project that is related to job postings. Consultants or employers register on my website and then start posting jobs. I want to make push notifications for all users. When a consultant or employer posts a job, all online users must get notified that an employer has posted this job without any page refreshes on jquery setInterval or timeout.
I am using Spring framework. I have searched for the solution but found nothing. I want to know whether Spring provided WebSockets in their latest version. Is this possible to do with WebSockets?
I want a proper resource so that I can implement it on my website.
There are two ways to satisfy your need;
First is polling in which you repeatedly send requests from client to the server. On server side you somehow need have a kind of message queue for each client to deliver the incidents on a request. There also is a different type of polling in which you send a request from client and never end the request on the server-side thus you have a kind of pipe between two ends. This is called long polling.
Disadvantage of polling is that you have to send requests to the server forever from the client and in many cases server sends empty messages as there is no events happened.
The real application of pushing messages is recently avaliable with websockets (thanks to html5). However this requires the application server to be capable of websocket functionality. afaik jetty and tomcat has this ability. Spring 4 has websocket here you can find the tutorial; http://syntx.io/using-websockets-in-java-using-spring-4/
You can find a related stackoverflow post here
I am not sure what are the advantages for using Faye or some other push system and not use Ajax for it.
Specifically I mean for implementing chat and notification functionality.
If I make a chat message model, and in my post ( which has many chat messages) , in the post page I can use Ajax to refresh the messages and I get the chat functionality.
Am I missing something on Faye or with Ajax?
Is it more efficient?
Faye is establishing a connection that the server can push data to the client with. With Ajax the client must request data and if it doesn't know that new data is available (which is the case in a chat client) then it must poll periodically for new content.
Is it more efficient? If the chat system sees enough traffic that your poll period is getting new data every time, probably not. If, on the other hand, you have an idle chat room then all of that polling is going to be chewing up resources that could be avoided by having the server push the data.
The flip side of this is that you are keeping a connection open with the server. This could work against you if you have a large number of idle clients. Because of this, it would be context sensitive as to which approach is better, or perhaps even a hybrid approach (opening a Faye connection for active use and then idling out to Ajax polling on an infrequent basis).
Similar questions have been asked before and they all reached the conclusion that AJAX will not become obsolete. But in what ways is ajax better than websockets?
With socket.io, it's easy to fall back to flash or long polling, so browser compatibility seems to be a non-issue.
Websockets are bidirectional. Where ajax would make an asynchronous request, websocket client would send a message to the server. The POST/GET parameters can be encoded in JSON.
So what is wrong with using 100% websockets? If every visitor maintains a persistent websocket connection to the server, would that be more wasteful than making a few ajax requests throughout the visit session?
I think it would be more wasteful. For every connected client you need some sort of object/function/code/whatever on the server paired up with that one client. A socket handler, or a file descriptor, or however your server is setup to handle the connections.
With AJAX you don't need a 1:1 mapping of server side resource to client. Your # of clients can scale less dependently than your server-side resources. Even node.js has its limitations to how many connections it can handle and keep open.
The other thing to consider is that certain AJAX responses can be cached too. As you scale up you can add an HTTP cache to help reduce the load from frequent AJAX requests.
Short Answer
Keeping a websocket active has a cost, for both the client and the server, whether Ajax will have a cost only once, depending on what you're doing with it.
Long Answer
Websockets are often misunderstood because of this whole "Hey, use Ajax, that will do !". No, Websockets are not a replacement for Ajax. They can potentially be applied to the same fields, but there are cases where using Websocket is absurd.
Let's take a simple example : A dynamic page which loads data after the page is loaded on the client side. It's simple, make an Ajax call. We only need one direction, from the server to the client. The client will ask for these data, the server will send them to the client, done. Why would you implement websockets for such a task ? You don't need your connection to be opened all the time, you don't need the client to constantly ask the server, you don't need the server to notify the client. The connection will stay open, it will waste resources, because to keep a connection open you need to constantly check it.
Now for a chat application things are totally different. You need your client to be notified by the server instead of forcing the client to ask the server every x seconds or milliseconds if something is new. It would make no sense.
To understand better, see that as two persons. One of the two is the server, the over is the client. Ajax is like sending a letter. The client sends a letter, the server responds with another letter. The fact is that, for a chat application the conversation would be like that :
"Hey Server, got something for me ?
- No.
- Hey Server, got something for me ?
- No.
- Hey Server, got something for me ?
- Yes, here it is."
The server can't actually send a letter to the client, if the client never asked for an answer. It's a huge waste of resources. Because for every Ajax request, even if it's cached, you need to make an operation on the server side.
Now the case I discussed earlier with the data loaded with Ajax. Imagine the client is on the phone with the server. Keeping the connection active has a cost. It costs electricity and you have to pay your operator. Now why would you need to call someone and keep him on phone for an hour, if you just want that person to tell you 3 words ? Send a goddamn letter.
In conclusion Websockets are not a total replacement for Ajax !
Sometimes you will need Ajax where Websocket usage is absurd.
Edit : The SSE case
That technology isn't used very widely but it can be useful. As its name states it, Server-Sent Events are a one-way push from the server to the client. The client doesn't request anything, the server just sends the data.
In short :
- Unidirectional from the client : Ajax
- Unidirectional from the server : SSE
- Bidirectional : Websockets
Personally, I think that websockets will be used more and more in web applications instead of AJAX. They are not well suited to web sites where caching and SEO are of greater concern, but they will do wonders for webapps.
Projects such as DNode and socketstream help to remove the complexity and enable simple RPC-style coding. This means your client code just calls a function on the server, passing whatever data to that function it wants. And the server can call a function on the client and pass it data as well. You don't need to concern yourself with the nitty gritties of TCP.
Furthermore, there is a lot of overhead with AJAX calls. For instance, a connection needs to be established and HTTP headers (cookies, etc.) are passed with every request. Websockets eliminate much of that. Some say that websockets are more wasteful, and perhaps they are right. But I'm not convinced that the difference is really that substantial.
I answered another related question in detail, including many links to related resources. You might check it out:
websocket api to replace rest api?
I think that sooner or later websocket based frameworks will start to popup not just for writing real-time chat like parts of web apps, but also as standalone web frameworks. Once permanent connection is created it can be used for receiving all kinds of stuff including UI parts of web application which are now served for example through AJAX requests. This approach may hurt SEO in some way although it can reduce amount of traffic and load generated by asynchronous requests which includes redundant HTTP headers.
However I doubt that websockets will replace or endanger AJAX because there are numerous scenarios where permanent connections are unnecessary or unwanted. For example mashup applications which are using (one time) single purpose REST based services that doesn't need to be permanently connected with clients.
There's nothing "wrong" about it.
The only difference is mostly readability. The main advantage of Ajax is that it allows you fast development because most of the functionality is written for you.
There's a great advantage in not having to re-invent the wheel every time you want to open a socket.
WS:// connections have far less overhead than "AJAX" requests.
As other people said, keeping the connection open can be overkill in some scenarios where you don't need server to client notifications, or client to server request happens with low frecuency.
But another disadvantage is that websockets is a low level protocol, not offering additional features to TCP once the initial handshake is performed. So when implementing a request-response paradigm over websockets, you will probably miss features that HTTP (a very mature and extense protocol family) offers, like caching (client and shared caches), validation (conditional requests), safety and idempotence (with implications on how the agent behaves), range requests, content types, status codes, ...
That is, you reduce message sizes at a cost.
So my choice is AJAX for request-response, websockets for server pushing and high frequency low latency messaging
If you want the connection to server open and if continuous polling to the server will be there then go for sockets else you are good to go with ajax.
Simple Analogy :
Ajax asks questions(requests) to server and server gives answers(responses) to these questions. Now if you want to ask continuous questions then ajax wont work, it has a large overhead which will require resources at both the ends.
I'm working on a web application that submits tasks to a master/worker system that farms out the tasks to any of a series of worker instances. The work queue master runs as a separate process (on a separate machine altogether) and tasks are submitted to the master via HTTP/REST requests. Once tasks are submitted to the work queue, client applications can submit another HTTP request to get status information about tasks.
For my web application, I'd like it to provide some sort of progress bar view that gives the user some indication of how far along task processing has come. The obvious way to implement this would be an AJAX progress meter widget that periodically polls the work queue for status on the tasks that have been submitted. My question is, is there a better way to accomplish this without the frequent polling?
I've considered having the client web application open up a server socket on which it could listen for notifications from the work master. Another similar thought I've had is to use XMPP or a similar protocol for the status notifications. (Of course, the master/worker system would need to be updated to provide notifications either way but I own the code for that so can make any necessary updates myself.)
Any thoughts on the best way to set up a notification system like this? Is the extra effort involved worth it, or is the simple polling solution the way to go?
Polling
The client keeps polling the server to get the status of the response.
Pros
Being really RESTful means cacheable and scaleable.
Cons
Not the best responsiveness if you do not want to poll your server too much.
Persistent connection
The server does not close its HTTP connection with the client until the response is complete. The server can send intermediate status through this connection using HTTP multiparts.
Comet is the most famous framework to implement this behaviour.
Pros
Best responsiveness, almost real-time notifications from the server.
Cons
Connection limit is limited on a web server, keeping a connection open for too long might, at best load your server, at worst open the server to Denial of Service attacks.
Client as a server
Make the server post status updates and the response to the client as if it were another RESTful application.
Pros
Best of every worlds, no resources are wasted waiting for the response, either on the server or on the client side.
Cons
You need a full HTTP server and web application stack on the client
Firewalls and routers with their default "no incoming connections at all" will get in the way.
Feel free to edit to add your thoughts or a new method!
I guess it depends on a few factors
How accurate the feedback can be (1 percent, 5 percent, 50 percent) Accurate feedback makes it worth pursuing some kind of progress bar and comet style push. If you can only say "Busy... hold on... almost there... done" then a simple ajax "are we there yet" poll is certainly easier to code.
How timely the Done message has to be seen by the client
How long each task takes (1 second, 10 seconds, 10 minutes)
1 second makes it a bit moot. 10 seconds makes it worth it. 10 minutes means you're better off suggesting the user goes for a coffee break :-)
How many concurrent requests there will be
Unless you've got a "special" server, live push style systems tend to eat connections and you'll be maxed out pretty quickly. Having to throw more webservers in for a fancy progress bar might hurt the budget.
I've got some sample code on 871184 that shows a hand rolled "forever frame" which seems to work out well. The project I developed that for isn't hammered all that hard though, the operations take a few seconds and we can give pretty accurate percent. The code uses asp.net and jquery, but the general techniques will work with any server and javascript framework.
edit As John points out, status reporting probably isn't the job of the RESTful service. But there's nothing that says you can't open an iframe on the client that hooks to a page on the server that polls the service. Theory says the server and the service will at least be closer to one another :-)
Look into Comet. You make a single request to the server and the server blocks and holds the connection open until an update in status occurs. Once that happens the response is sent and committed. The browser receives this response, handles it and immediately re-requests the same URL. The effect is that of events being pushed to the browser. There are pros and cons and it might not be appropriate for all use cases but would provide the most timely status updates.
My opinion is to stick with the polling solution, but you might be interested in this Wikipedia article on HTTP Push technologies.
REST depends on HTTP, which is a request/response protocol. I don't think you're going to get a pure HTTP server calling the client back with status.
Besides, status reporting isn't the job of the service. It's up to the client to decide when, or if, it wants status reported.
One approach I have used is:
When the job is posted to the server, the server responds back a pubnub-channel id (one could alternatively use Google's PUB-SUB kind of service).
The client on browser subscribes to that channel and starts listening for messages.
The worker/task server publishes status on that pubnub channel to update the progress.
On receiving messages on the subscribed pubnub-channel, the client updates the web UI.
You could also use self-refreshing iframe, but AJAX call is much better. I don't think there is any other way.
PS: If you would open a socket from client, that wouldn't change much - PHP browser would show the page as still "loading", which is not very user-friendly. (assuming you would push or flush buffer to have other things displayed before)