I am facing a scenario where live Twilio call gets dropped, if the browser window in which call is received is reloaded. Is there a way to overcome this set-back without affecting the live calls?
Twilio Evangelist here.
Based on your question, I assume you are using the Twilio Client JavaScript SDK? If that is indeed the case, then unfortunately, if the page thats hosting the SDK gets reloaded the connection between the browser and Twilio will drop since the browser is reloading everything, including the JavaScript SDK.
There are a couple of different techniques I can think of off the top of my head that you can use to help avoid page reloads, and another idea that could help you recover a call where the connection to the browser has dropped because of a page reload. A lot of this is going to depend on your specific app and the experience you are trying to create for your users.
So to help avoid having to reload the page:
1) Use AJAX requests to your server in order to avoid page reloads. If your page includes content like a form, or you want to update the page content with data form the server, you can look using AJAX requests to the server instead of a normal full page postback to submit the form, or to retrieve the data form the server. This would help in avoiding having to reload the entire page in those two scenarios.
2) Use an iFrame to host your page content, and then put the Twilio SDK in the parent page (the one that defined the iFrame). This would let you reload the content hosted in the iframe, without having to reload the entire host page, avoiding a reload the the Twilio library. The downside to this is that communicating between content in an iframe and its host can get really messy fast.
Neither of these two techniques is fool-proof. Obviously a user can always just hit the refresh button on their browser, and thats going to cause the connection to drop.
In a case where the page does get reloaded, and the connection from Twilio to the browser gets dropped, one idea is to leverage Twilios capability to help reconnect the caller together. When a user calls your twilio phone number, instead of connecting them directly to the Twilio Client running in the browser (by dialing a client with <Client>), instead dial that caller into a conference <Conference>, and then have the browser client connect into that same conference. The benefit to that is if the browser disconnects, the original caller won't get hung up on, they will still be sitting in the conference room. As long as you've saved the Conference SID or name, you can have the browser client reconnect to that conference.
Hope that helps point you in the right direction.
Related
I'm looking to do the following:
I have a device that receives data from a website, in this case to light up an LED. However, I would like to do the reverse now, where I can click a physical button on the device (to trigger code) and send a message to display on the website. The website itself is just simple HTML, and I'm using the ESP8266 to send the data over wifi, programmed using arduino code and the WebSocketServer library. I'm not quite sure how to get a message across, nor how to actually display it within the website. I apologize if this is quite easy, but I'be been wracking my head for two hours trying to find it online, and have had no luck. Cheers!
In reference to http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Esp8266-Post-Data-to-Website/ blog by Khalilm , It seems to be much easy for accomplishing your aim.He explains it in six steps.
HTTP works as a request-response protocol between a client and server. A web browser may be the client, and an application on a computer that hosts a web site may be the server. Example: A client (browser) submits an HTTP request to the server; then the server returns a response to the client. The response contains status information about the request and may also contain the requested content. On our example the esp8266 is the client and the server that is hosting our website is the server.
Because HTTP is a request-response protocol, as mentioned above, it's not really about "sending" anything to a browser, but rather of making it available to the browser when someone visits the page, the page is reloaded, or the page "reaches out" to the server with a webservice call, for example, to update part of the page.
However, one twist you could do on your project is:
1. Press the button
2. Record the time in millis() for example.
3. Create a small webpage to show "Button was last pressed at ___ millis()"
4. Then press button whenever you like and refresh the page to see updated time.
Beyond that, you'll need scripting on the browser side to poll the webserver. Given that you don't really ever "send" to a website, does this idea make sense, a reasonable derivative of what you were attempting? If so, give it a try and we'll help if you run into problems.
I'm trying to make a Firefox addon with the Firefox Add-on SDK and API, and I have some questions about their possibilities before I start using them.
My college's Wi-Fi authorization expires every 30 minutes only to have fun pissing off their students. There are already some autofill addons available on many browsers but it's still destructing to move the mouse pointer onto the "Login" button and click it when there is one second left to turn in a midterm paper. I've heard my friends complaining like this for months and I myself think the thing is actually annoying sometimes, so I decided to develop a Firefox addon that takes charge of the job so that the authorization process will feel not even existing once the addon is activated. (I just want to impress my friends honestly.)
For ease I would like to develop the addon within the Firefox add-on SDK. I found that my addon would be utilizing the page-mod, password and request APIs; page-mod to detect the Wi-Fi service's auto-redirection into their authorization page, password to fill in the page's form by a student ID and password stored in the individual Firefox browser, request to redirect the "Login Successful!" page into the originally given destination.
So I guess it should be possible to achieve my goal with this SDK and APIs, but there are still some questions that I need to ask before I proceed:
Is it possible to pass a callback function to page-mod::PageMod (not as a String or a URL to another JavaScript file)? If not, can it be done using the lower level API?
Is it possible to actually redirect a page in a tab into another page only using high level APIs?
Is it possible to remember the original destination's location (with the request method and contents) and call it in the process of page-mod::PageMod (in order to re-redirect out of the authorization page)? If not, can it be done using the lower level API?
Is it possible to perform the addon's redirection function on inactive (background) tabs where the opened webpages automatically keep connecting to the Internet and get redirected to the authorization page?
Thank you so much for reading and please spare a little bit of your time for me. Thank you again!
Is it possible to pass a callback function to page-mod::PageMod (not as a String or a URL to another JavaScript file)? If not, can it be done using the lower level API?
No, everything that goes through the port is serialized using JSON serialization (See docs). Instead you would probably emit an event from your content script to execute the callback method with parameters you pass it in the module scope and hardcode parts that need to be done in the content script with port event listeners.
Is it possible to actually redirect a page in a tab into another page only using high level APIs?
Totally, if you're in a content script, you can just set window.location, or in your modules you set the location of a tab, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK/High-Level_APIs/tabs#url.
Is it possible to remember the original destination's location (with the request method and contents) and call it in the process of page-mod::PageMod (in order to re-redirect out of the authorization page)? If not, can it be done using the lower level API?
Possible? Yes, depends a lot on how the redirection from the W-LAN works. Generally all the SDK offers you is getting load/ready events for tabs and reading a tab's current URL. So if you get a ready event at the point of the redirect you're fine. If your college login remembers the redirect target using a get parameter in the URL you're fine. If your college doesn't adjust the URL, you're fine. If you really need to dig through the request, you'll have to ge a bit deeper than even what the SDK offers you, but it is possible.
Is it possible to perform the addon's redirection function on inactive (background) tabs where the opened webpages automatically keep connecting to the Internet and get redirected to the authorization page?
JS execution for Add-ons is not paused based on a tabs state.
I'm just testing out Google Play Music, and noticed that with so much going on on a single page, how come there aren't many XHR requests showing up in the console?
When I create an AJAX site, every single XHR request I perform (usually using jQuery's $.ajax() method) is clearly visible in the console, as expected. But on mainstream sites, even more so with Facebook, there don't seem to be many visible XHR request going on, and they certainly don't seem to be pinging the server every 10 seconds or so to check for new status updates...!
Alternatives I've read about are persistent connections, and dynamically inserting tags into the page which presumably pulls data from other sources making it available in the current page.
I never tried those sites but a common solution, used for example on Stack Overflow, is to use websockets. They enable an efficient pushing of information from the server to the client without polling.
WP7 newbie here..
In my application, I am using embedded web browser control to load an external web page.
I have a PIN based validation step in that application, which involves
1) User Leaving the current application, (which has a external web page loaded in the embedded web browser) to launch the SMS Inbox.
2) User reads the SMS he just received, which has the PIN. I am sending this SMS to the user.
3) The User then needs to resume back to the original application by hitting back button, to enter the PIN which he received in the SMS earlier.
Once user enters Step2, my application will go into background, and subsequently will get tombstoned. Once user enter Step3, I want to restore application state (with the embedded web browser control), without making a fresh HTTP request again to load the web page.
So, with the given scenario in my mind, I have following two questions -
1) Is there a better way to do all this, like not having to exit the original application, and still let user read the SMS. ( i.e any api to read sms ?)
2) Is there a way to serialize the browser state/save entire web page (with images, css, js) , such that entire web page can be rendered exactly the way it was, when user left the running application.
Important points:
1) I can only use SMS as a communication channel. I can not use something like raw push notification channel, which could let me show PIN to the user, without exiting the application.
2) I am targeting Windows phone 7.0 runtime, but if there is a better option available in Windows Mango update, please do tell me.
Any sort of help is greatly appreciated.
Update:
Added link to the embedded web browser component.
1) There is no API that would let you access the contents of the Messaging hub from inside your application. This is set up for privacy purposes.
2) By default, the web browser saves its state. So if you navigate away from your app, and then come back - the same web page will still be there unless you explicitly re-navigate on activation
1) The better way to do this would be to not embed the web page within an app. Just build a mobile website. If all the functionality is within the web page you gain nothing but problems by trying to put it inside an app.
The web browser control is not intended to be used to create an alternative browser (which is really what you're doing).
2) You can try using the SaveToString() method to store the state of the page when tombstoned but this doesn't allow for modifications to the page since it was loaded (including anything dynamically updated or any state in javascript). If you have multiple pages you'll also need to maintain the internal backstack and the state of each page separately.
Short answer: If you want to put your application logic in a webBrowser control then you can't support tombstoning. Fast-App-Switching (in Mango) partially addresses this but not completely.
I am looking for a web service kind of like Google Analytics.
Paste some javascript into your web page and if any of the links there become invalid, hey presto, an email is sent to someone telling them which link, which page etc etc has the incorrect link.
Anyone heard of such a service?
This would slow the page loading down a lot if it had to check for broken links every time someone visited it (basically a http request for every link). Not that it isn't possible, but the implementation would have to be very very good.
Javascript cannot send emails, you would have to use ajax to post the details to another page that would then email the admin. As this is all client side, it is very open to abuse.
I would suggest using a program to do it every now and again. There are even Firefox extensions to do it rather than a program. Google will also list a whole host of websites offering the service.