UI implementation of personal messaging limits - user-interface

I have a simple messaging system on my site. I would like to implement limits on messages. For basic users, users can have store a maximum of 250 messages in their inbox and supporters can store a maximum of 3000 messages.
My question is about the UI aspects.
If a basic user already has 250 messages:
would you block another user from being able to send them a message until they have deleted some messages?
Or would you put the new message in a queue and not show it until a user has deleted some messages?
Would you tell them they have new messages waiting but they can't read them until they've deleted some messages?
What would be your approach?

I would suggest an automatic delete that the oldest messages are automatically removed when newer messages arrive.
Edit: See comment below.
Also, besides this method, you could make a way to save some messages or make them favorite to prevent auto-deleting them.

Related

Django-Channels | How to assure order and delivery of messages

From the docs it is clear that message delivery is not guaranteed by django-channels. I want to implement a way in my chat app so that there is a guarantee that messages are delivered to the client.
I am using redis, if that matter. When I say messages I don't mean chat text messages. I haven't implemented that part and don't need that for now. I just have video call feature. What gets lost sometimes is when users join the room the room members list doesn't reach them. So I want to do something like:
Client connects.
Servers creates a record of the event in step 3 below.
Server sends the list of room members event to the client.
Client process and acknowledges the list.
Server on receiving the acknowledgment from the client marks the list sent event as SUCCESS or something.
My questions are.
Is this approach good?
And should I use a new model to store the message events so that server can know which messages to sent and which have been already sent successfully or is there anyway to do it in redis db?
I am new to this so I maybe overlooking something that you as experienced guys know of. Please guide me with your precious inputs.
Thanks

Sending JMS messages between 2 systems

I have 2 systems where System A has to send messages to System B. I am new to JMS so I don't have a big idea on how to implement this. I was thinking of using a message broker (ActiveMQ) to send messages. So, System A will send messages to a queue and the Message Listener in B will consume those messages. There are many users in System B and I want these messages to be shown whenever the user log into the system. So my problem is, if System B keeps consuming messages even when the users are not logged in how can they see the messages which are already consumed?
Should I store the consumed messages in a database? I don't understand how this works.
You could let SystemB read all the messages and act as a gateway between JMS and the system itself, i.e. store each user message in the database and when a user logs in, read those messages from the database and display them. If the user has to acknowledge they've read each message that might be a better solution as you can then track if they've read them all and delete each one from the database as they acknowledge they've read it.
Another solution might be virtual topics and queues. A single topic that messages are sent to that is split into queues, one per user. When a user logs in, SystemB reads from that user's queue. This is separate from the application's domain (it's JMS at this point) so the message is marked as consumed and is taken off the queue by ActiveMQ. If the user doesn't read it and needs to see it the next time they login then you need the database solution.
It's essentially where two domains meet. The information the user needs to see comes in on JMS, which has its own rules (message consumed, remove from queue etc). The information then enters your application's domain which might have different rules (must read, save for next login etc).
If a user doesn't login for a long period of time, their queue might fill up and not be able to receive any more messages, whereas, if the messages are always read and stored in a database it doesn't matter how frequently they login as the database should be better at holding large amounts of messages.
Another option is one topic per user and messages are sent to those topics but other systems would need to know which users are in your system, which probably isn't a good idea. Or you could use Apache Camel to route incoming messages on the main topic to user topics. The messages would need to be durable and transacted in case the broker went down. When a user logs in, read from the topic to get all their messages. You can route based on content or headers.
Your problem is one of message persistence and or re-delivery. There are a couple of approaches:
JMS Durable subscription: you could make a durable subscription on a topic from system B and only consume messages while users are logged in. When you don't receive() messages, your messages will be held at the broker for you until you call receive() again. In case A sent messages persistently, all of this is saved by the ActiveMQ broker on disk.
JMS Queue: system A puts messages into a queue and System B doesn't pick up the messages unless users are logged in. The queue will get bigger until you call receive() again from system B. Similar to durable subscriptions, but with a queue you can only have one consumer for each message. With durable subscriptions it's a easier to configure a fault-tolerant version of system B...
Add a 'replay server' for n-times delivery: system A publishes to a topic (could be non-persistent) and a third component (C) would also subscribe to every message and persist to disk. When system B needs to see a message again, it could ask system C for those messages, ideally supporting from_time, or similar.

IBM MQ message history

Is it possible to keep a history of messages (with message content would be perfect) that have already been retrieved and are no longer on a queue?
In the application I can see when the sender attempts to put the message in the queue and when the receiver attempts to pick the messages up, but I'd like to see when the message really arrived into the queue and when the messages were really received.
Does MQ Explorer have this function? How would I use it?
What you are looking for is a message tracking/auditing software for IBM MQ. You can find a list of what is available here.
It is possible to use an API exit to make copies of messages in a queue or to audit both PUT and GET operations.
It is also possible to put messages to a topic, then create as many administrative subscriptions to destination queues as required. Something can then GET and log messages from one of those destination queues. The problem with this is that MQ changes the message ID between publication and consumption whereas in a queue it remains static.
There is no native MQ function to capture messages. It's possible to use linear logs and later scrape the logs but these do not necessarily capture all messages due to optimization. (A message PUT to a waiting getter outside of syncpoint for example.) However there is at least one commercial product to scrape linear transaction logs to audit message activity.
The philosophy of MQ in general is that it is the delivery mechanism and deals with envelope data to route and deliver but does not deal with payload data. WAS, IIB and other broker/transformation engines are where IBM has put all of the functions that deal with message payloads.

JMS design: topic and queue combination

I am relatively new to JMS and I have been reading a lot on it lately.
I am planning to design a web app which would do the following:
User logs into the system and publishes a message/question to a topic.
All the users who have subscribed to the topic read the message/question and reply to it.
The originator reviews all the answers and picks the best answer.
The originator now replies to only the user whose answer he/she picked and asks for further clarification.
The responder gets the message and replies.
So, once the originator has picked the answer, the JMS now becomes a request/reply design.
My questions are:
Is it possible to publish to a topic with setJmsReplyTo(tempQueue)?
Can request/reply approach be async?
Is it a good idea to have per user queue?
These questions might some dumb to some of the experts here, but please bare in mind that I am still learning.
Thanks.
Is it possible to publish to a topic with setJmsReplyTo(tempQueue)?
You should be able but I'm not 100% sure about it. By the way, I searched in my bookmarks and found this link that should explain what you have to do to build up a Request/Response system using JMS
http://activemq.apache.org/how-should-i-implement-request-response-with-jms.html
Can request/reply approach be async?
A message listener is an object that acts as an asynchronous event handler for messages. So you approach about request/reply, if using JMS, is by default async.
http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/1.3/jms/tutorial/1_3_1-fcs/doc/prog_model.html#1023398
Is it a good idea to have per user queue?
I don't know how many user you expect to have but having one queue for each user is not a good way to handle the messages. I had a problem similar to yours but we used a single queue for each of the macro area and we structured the message to hold the information of the user that sent it in order to store the information later and use it to further analysis.
JMSReplyTo is just a message header, nothing else. So It is possible to publish a message withing a topic with specific value in this header.
Sure! If you would like to create a scalable system you should design event driven system using async instead of blocking aproach. MessageListener can help you.
It is specific to JMS broker implementation. If queue creation is quite cheap there is no problems with such a solution.

Which gateway to use for SMS messages when multiple to choose from?

Hypothetical: I want to send a single text message to all Verizon phones programmatically. I have multiple email gateways to use (obtained from the all-reliable wikipedia):
number#vtext.com
number#vzwpix.com
number#message.alltel.com
number#text.wireless.alltel.com
number#mms.alltel.net
I don't think that I'm guaranteed that any one of these will work and/or will still be in service (am I?) and I would not like to have to come back and change anything in the code at a later date.
Is there any way that I can make sure that I only send one text message to a given phone number when there are 5 possible gateways?
The only way way (that I know of) to ensure you only deliver one message to the recipient is to try each gateway sequentially until a message sends successfully, like some of the comments mentioned.
However, I've been sending a decent volume (>1500) of messages using #vtext.com lately and haven't noticed any bounces or downtime during sending. I have no way of knowing if every single message was delivered, but none of my test numbers have dropped a message yet. Most US carriers seem to have decent reliability on their gateways these days.
Just remember that SMS is still considered a best-effort service by most carriers. Even if you get your message to their servers successfully, there's no guarantee that the message will make it to its destination.

Resources