Thanks. That is some good information. I was unaware of "long polling"/comet. That does seem like it would be a good solution. Also, I'll be controlling what browser they'll be using, so that shouldn't be an issue.
I've also done a little bit of reading on web sockets, but I think it may be a little bit early to implement that in a production system at this point. I'm anxious to see how that picks up and where it will be going. Any other thoughts on how to do "live" updating? Thanks! ~Philip On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Sanford Whiteman < [email protected]> wrote: > > Is this a good way to manage these notifications? > > It's one of several reasonable options. Reviewing the others is a lot > to get into here. > > I would recommend you use the long-polling approach, where you leave > the XHR open until there is an interesting update to send across the > wire. In this case, you don't want to use .periodical() and > link:chain, but rather reconnect the XHR onComplete with optional > .delay(). > > I don't use link:chain unless independent parts of my application > trigger the same XHR without any knowledge of each other (not > uncommon, of course) and/or might change XHR parameters at send() > time. That is, if you're setting off this XHR one time in your code, > .periodical() and link:chain pretty much just mean you increase your > overhead with a dangerous downside. Imagine if your server has a > slowdown that causes XHRs to take 11 seconds to connect and return -- > you're guaranteeing clients will build up a big backlog of XHRs and > get only misery when fast service returns. (Yes, in proper operation > when your benchmarks are < 1s, 10s seems like it'll be fine forever, > but you have to look at reality....) > > HOWEVER, simplistic long-polling is doomed in IE 7 because of > connection limits. The most sophisticated way to deal w/browser > differences is with a Comet framework, where capable browsers get > permanent, multi-result streaming connections of various sorts, most > other browsers get single-result long polling connections using DNS > and iframe hacks if necessary, and outliers get periodical checks. You > could bluntly down-shift to periodical checks in IE 7 and FF 2 (if you > care about the latter) and be largely okay. > > -- Sandy > > -- http://lonestarlightandsound.com/
