I have a web-page (Django 1.9 on back-end, Apache server) with an endless-paginated table with large data set and column filters. When a user activates one filter (let's denote it CHOICE 1), and then instantly changes his mind resetting the filter (let's refer to it as CHOICE 2), I would like to tell Ajax to give up waiting for back-end response to CHOICE 1 and go on to posting and waiting for CHOICE 2 request. For this purpose, I had the following JS code:
// AJAX_GET_REQUEST is a global variable
AJAX_GET_REQUEST= $.ajax(
{
type:'GET',
url:"/my_url/",
beforeSend : function()
{
if (AJAX_GET_REQUEST!= null)
AJAX_GET_REQUEST.abort();
},
data:data,
success: function(response)
{
// Do something
}
});
Fine. I used to think that I achieved the goal of successfully canceling irrelevant requests, But I found out that AJAX_GET_REQUEST.abort(); leads to Django error [Errno 10053] An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine. The interesting think is that this is not a 'fatal error' in that the app does not terminate, but rather it takes years for my paginated table to load. Django seems to reactivate connection itself and go on to handle last request. Finally after waiting for long time I see the correct result on front-end. If I remove the AJAX_GET_REQUEST.abort(); line, everything is fine, but I have to wait until Django is through with irrelevant requests until it goes on to handle the last relevant request.
Is there any way out? Is it possible to abort previous requests avoiding this annoying 10053 error ?
I have a function that performs a backup every 5 seconds. From time to time the target server of the backup is not reachable and the request stops until the timeout is reached.
Since this affects the user interface I execute this 'backup function' as a async ajax request.
setInterval("doSync()", 5000 );
function doSync() {
$.ajax({
url: "backup.php",
async : true
});
};
This runs pretty good in the background.
But as soon as a reload of the page is executed, already waiting backup function calls will be completed. So in the worst case, if I have a backup with 30 seconds timeout, the user has to wait this 30 seconds before the new page is loaded.
That is not acceptable for the user.
Which strategy can I implement to avoid this?
It would be ok to terminate the backup request...
I think that issue is rather specific to the browser.
Indeed, most of them limit the number of parallel requests to the same host and that's why it "waits" before reloading the page.
If you're calling the exact same URL via your AJAX request as the one you're trying to reload, Firefox will not run more than ONE request at the same time. A simple workaround is to append a random query string to the URL.
Another option is to use the javascript beforeunload event to cancel your AJAX request : Abort Ajax requests using jQuery
I would maybe think about setting timeout in your case.
I also found similar problem already solved: click
I've been scouring the web trying to find a straight answer to this. Does anyone know the default timeout lengths for ajax request by browser? Also by version if it's changed?
According to the specs, the timeout value defaults to zero, which means there is no timeout. However, you can set a timeout value on the XHR.timeout property; the value is in milliseconds.
Sources:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-XMLHttpRequest2-20110816/#the-timeout-attribute
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc304105(v=vs.85).aspx
I don't think browsers have a timeout for AJAX, there is only synchronous or asynchronous requests; synchronous - first freezes the JavaScript execution until the request returns,
asynchronous - does not freeze JavaScript execution, it simply takes the request out of the execution flow, and if you have a callback function it will execute the the function in parallel with the running scripts (similar to a thread)
**sync flow:**
running JS script
|
ajax
(wait for response)
|
execute callback
|
running JS script
**async flow:**
running JS script
|
ajax --------------------
| |
running JS script execute callback
I did a modest amount of testing. To test I loaded my website, stopped the local server and then attempted an AJAX request. I set the timeout to something low like 1000ms until I could ensure I had minimal code (you must put the xhr.timeout after open and before send).
Once I got it working my initial goal was to determine the appropriate amount of time to allow however I was surprised how quickly the timeout would be outright ignored by browsers. My goal reformed in to trying to determine what the maximum timeout could be before error handling was no longer viable.That means past these fairly short spans of time your timeout handler script will not work at all. What I found was pretty pathetic.
Chrome 60: 995ms, 996ms will throw a dirty evil error in to the console.
Firefox 52 ESR: ~3000ms, position of mouse or other issue may cause no response around or just under three seconds.
So...
xhr.open(method,url,true);
xhr.timeout = 995;//REALLY short
xhr.send(null);
xhr.ontimeout = function ()
{
//Code will only execute if at or below *effective* timeouts list above.
//Good spot to make a second attempt.
}
So if your timeout is set higher than 995ms Chrome will ignore your code and puke on your nice clean empty console that you worked hard to keep clean. Firefox is not much better and there are unreliable requests that just timeout for well beyond any patience I have and in doing so ignore the ontimeout handler.
Browser does have a timeout value, behavior depends upon browser chrome has timeout value of 5 minutes and after 5 minutes it does resend ajax call
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
I occasionally have some long running AJAX requests in my Wicket application. When this occurs the application is largely unusable as subsequent AJAX requests are queued up to process synchronously after the current request. I would like the request to terminate after a period of time regardless of whether or not a response has been returned (I have a user requirement that if this occurs we should present the user an error message and continue). This presents two questions:
Is there any way to specify a
timeout that's specific to an AJAX
or all AJAX request(s)?
If not, is there any way to kill the current request?
I've looked through the wicket-ajax.js file and I don't see any mention of a request timeout whatsoever.
I've even gone so far as to try re-loading the page after some timeout on the client side, but unfortunately the server is still busy processing the original AJAX request and does not return until the AJAX request has finished processing.
Thanks!
I think it won't help you to let the client 'cancel' the request. (However this could work.)
The point is that the server is busy processing a request that is not required anymore. If you want to timeout such operations you had to implement the timeout on the server side. If the operation takes too long, then the server aborts it and returns some error value as the result of the Ajax request.
Regarding your queuing problem: You may consider to use asynchronous requests in spite of synchronous ones. This means that the client first sends a request for starting the long running process. This request immediately returns. Then the client periodically polls the server and asks if the process has finished. Those poll requests also return immediately saying either that the process is still running or that it has finished with a certain result.
Failed solution: After a given setTimeout I kill the active transports and restart the channel, which handles everything on the client side. I avoided request conflicts by tying each to an ID and checking that against a global reference that increments each time a request is made and each time a request completes.
function longRunningCallCheck(refId) {
// make sure the reference id matches the global id.
// this indicates that we are still processing the
// long running ajax call.
if(refId == id){
// perform client processing here
// kill all active transport layers
var t = Wicket.Ajax.transports;
for (var i = 0; i < t.length; ++i) {
if (t[i].readyState != 0) {
t[i].onreadystatechange = Wicket.emptyFunction;
t[i].abort();
}
}
// process the default channel
Wicket.channelManager.done('0|s');
}
}
Unfortunately, this still left the PageMap blocked and any subsequent calls wait for the request to complete on the server side.
My solution at this point is to instead provide the user an option to logout using a BookmarkablePageLink (which instantiates a new page, thus not having contention on the PageMap). Definitely not optimal.
Any better solutions are more than welcome, but this is the best one I could come up with.