Understanding New Relic's RUM with AJAX requests - html

I'm looking to do some performance tuning based on what I am seeing in New Relic's RUM output, but I need to understand the following first.
I have a page that loads up a KendoUI grid. The grid is configured to load it's data asynchronously. So the page loads and the user gets to see the grid layout. In a few milliseconds the grid displays the "loading" graphic, while it then waits for the async request for the data, which comes back as Json, following which the "loading" graphic is replaced with actual data.
I need to understand if this async loading of the data for the grid (or any other $.ajax() request for that matter) in any way affects New Relic's RUM output?
Specifically, the RUM is reporting a certain time for DOM Processing, and a certain time for Page Rendering. In which one of those two numbers will the async request be reported (if at all)?

In general, if anything happens after the Load() event, then the New Relic RUM (Real User Monitoring) will not capture this activity.
For example, if you take a look at your network (or waterfall) view in a browser you can see exactly when this Load event fires and when your resources are loaded in the context of this event.
Most likely, your async assets will (and should) be gathered after this Load() event and will not be included in RUM metrics. This blog article has a nice breakdown of how to tune this type of metric (and how New Relic has in the past).
"The RUM timer stops when the browser has rendered and the user is able to interact with the page. ... It’s up to you to decide what that means, and adjust your ... code accordingly."
http://blog.newrelic.com/2012/05/10/how-we-tune-our-own-app-using-rum-data/
We are also investigating adding support for Ajax instrumentation so you can get additional visibility into this activity.

New Relic has recently updated their monitoring to add support for measuring AJAX requests. You can find the release blog here:
New Relic AJAX Support Release Blog
and the docs here:
Enabling New Relic Browser AJAX Monitoring

Related

How to stop http request from dash_renderer

I am trying a build a realtime monitoring system for high frequency data. To increase the performance, I used the extendData property of dcc.Graph() and websocket. So that, the brouser does not need to send request to get data.
I found that it still not increasing the performance as expected. The reason I found is, from the browser, I see (by inspecting network from browser) after some miliseconds browser is still sendng request and the initiator is the dash_renderer.
This picture is for a vanilla example just to show even for a textbox example the http request goes on and on. And for my real time websocket dashboard the frequency of requests get very high.
My question is:
What dash_renderer do?
why it is sending http request?
And how to stop that?
If you run Dash in Debug mode, it has a feature called Hot Reloading which regularly (every 3 seconds by default) checks for changes to your codebase and updates your running app if it finds any. That check for updated code is what you're seeing in the network inspection.
To turn it off, either don't run in debug mode or explicitly set dev_tools_hot_reload to False like so:
app.run_server(debug=True, dev_tools_hot_reload=False)
Although it is late, After some experience, my realization is dash is not designed to work with websocket. It uses call-backs which actually sends requests to server and in server, the callback function (which is python) send back some result.
These call-backs are designed to send HTTP request to server.
For high speed data, the websocket should be used with extendTrace method of plotly.js in client side.

How can I configure Polymer's platinum-sw-* to NOT cache one URL path?

How can I configure Polymer's platinum-sw-cache or platinum-sw-fetch to cache all URL paths except for /_api, which is the URL for Hoodie's API? I've configured a platinum-sw-fetch element to handle the /_api path, then platinum-sw-cache to handle the rest of the paths, as follows:
<platinum-sw-register auto-register
clients-claim
skip-waiting
on-service-worker-installed="displayInstalledToast">
<platinum-sw-import-script href="custom-fetch-handler.js"></platinum-sw-import-script>
<platinum-sw-fetch handler="HoodieAPIFetchHandler"
path="/_api(.*)"></platinum-sw-fetch>
<platinum-sw-cache default-cache-strategy="networkFirst"
precache-file="precache.json"/>
</platinum-sw-cache>
</platinum-sw-register>
custom-fetch-handler.js contains the following. Its intent is simply to return the results of the request the way the browser would if the service worker was not handling the request.
var HoodieAPIFetchHandler = function(request, values, options){
return fetch(request);
}
What doesn't seem to be working correctly is that after user 1 has signed in, then signed out, then user 2 signs in, then in Chrome Dev Tools' Network tab I can see that Hoodie regularly continues to make requests to BOTH users' API endpoints like the following:
http://localhost:3000/_api/?hoodieId=uw9rl3p
http://localhost:3000/_api/?hoodieId=noaothq
Instead, it should be making requests to only ONE of these API endpoints. In the Network tab, each of these URLs appears twice in a row, and in the "Size" column the first request says "(from ServiceWorker)," and the second request states the response size in bytes, in case that's relevant.
The other problem which seems related is that when I sign in as user 2 and submit a form, the app writes to user 1's database on the server side. This makes me think the problem is due to the app not being able to bypass the cache for the /_api route.
Should I not have used both platinum-sw-cache and platinum-sw-fetch within one platinum-sw-register element, since the docs state they are alternatives to each other?
In general, what you're doing should work, and it's a legitimate approach to take.
If there's an HTTP request made that matches a path defined in <platinum-sw-fetch>, then that custom handler will be used, and the default handler (in this case, the networkFirst implementation) won't run. The HTTP request can only be responded to once, so there's no chance of multiple handlers taking effect.
I ran some local samples and confirmed that my <platinum-sw-fetch> handler was properly intercepting requests. When debugging this locally, it's useful to either add in a console.log() within your custom handler and check for those logs via the chrome://serviceworker-internals Inspect interface, or to use the same interface to set some breakpoints within your handler.
What you're seeing in the Network tab of the controlled page is expected—the service worker's network interactions are logged there, whether they come from your custom HoodieAPIFetchHandler or the default networkFirst handler. The network interactions from the perspective of the controlled page are also logged—they don't always correspond one-to-one with the service worker's activity, so logging both does come in handy at times.
So I would recommend looking deeper into the reason why your application is making multiple requests. It's always tricky thinking about caching personalized resources, and there are several ways that you can get into trouble if you end up caching resources that are personalized for a different user. Take a look at the line of code that's firing off the second /_api/ request and see if it's coming from an cached resource that needs to be cleared when your users log out. <platinum-sw> uses the sw-toolbox library under the hood, and you can make use of its uncache() method directly within your custom handler scripts to perform cache maintenance.

Spine.js - show "loading" message

Objective : To block the UI until the Ajax validation call returns. With some dialog or message.
The problem: How in a Spine/MVC way, am i supposed to append and them remove the HTML content on the top of current view?
Half-baked solution: Inside Controller->
Bind the model ajaxSuccess function to remove the message HTML, and append the "loading" message on Saving the Model object.
Any ideas,?
Thanks.
Quick answer: you should try to avoid it altogether. It's annoying for the user and against the core philosophy of spine.js.
http://spinejs.com/docs/introduction :
Core values:
[...]
Asynchronous interfaces - Too many JavaScript applications & frameworks don't take full advantage of the power of client-side rendering. End-users don't care if background requests to the server are pending, and don't want to see loading messages and spinners. Users want unblocked interfaces, and instant interaction. To enable this, Spine stores and renders everything client-side, communicating with the server asynchronously.
I understand that sometimes blocking just can't be avoided. In those cases I would follow this pattern:
In the controller:
Add blocking overlay html
Call model method that is asynchronous but needs blocking
Wait for model to emit an event that signals that the action is finished, eg. validationDone
In the model:
Write asynchronous method as usual
In both success and error handlers, emit the validationDone event

Is there a way to 'listen' for a database event and update a page in real time?

I'm looking for a way to create a simple HTML table that can be updated in real-time upon a database change event; specifically a new record added.
In other words, think of it like an executive dashboard. If a sale is made and a new line is added in a database (MySQL in my case) then the web page should "refresh" the table with the new line.
I have seen some information on the new using EVENT GATEWAY but all of the examples use Coldfusion as the "pusher" and not the "consumer". I would like to have Coldfusion both update / push an event to the gateway and also consume the response.
If this can be done using a combination of AJAX and CF please let me know!
I'm really just looking to understand where to get started with real-time updating.
Thank you in advance!!
EDIT / Explanation of selected answer:
I ended up going with #bpeterson76's answer because at the moment it was easiest to implement on a small scale. I really like his Datatables suggestion, and that's what I am using to update in close to real time.
As my site gets larger though (hopefully), I'm not sure if this will be a scalable solution as every user will be hitting a "listener" page and then subsequently querying my DB. My query is relatively simple, but I'm still worried about performance in the future.
In my opinion though, as HTML5 starts to become the web standard, the Web Sockets method suggested by #iKnowKungFoo is most likely the best approach. Comet with long polling is also a great idea, but it's a little cumbersome to implement / also seems to have some scaling issues.
So, let's hope web users start to adopt more modern browsers that support HTML5, because Web Sockets is a relatively easy and scalable way to get close to real time.
If you feel that I made the wrong decision please leave a comment.
Finally, here is some source code for it all:
Javascript:
note, this is a very simple implementation. It's only looking to see if the number of records in the current datatable has changed and if so update the table and throw an alert. The production code is much longer and more involved. This is just showing a simple way of getting a close to real-time update.
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
var originalNumberOfRecsInDatatable = 0;
var oTable;
var setChecker = setInterval(checkIfNewRecordHasBeenAdded,5000); //5 second intervals
function checkIfNewRecordHasBeenAdded() {
//json object to post to CFM page
var postData = {
numberOfRecords: originalNumberOfRecsInDatatable
};
var ajaxResponse = $.ajax({
type: "post",
url: "./tabs/checkIfNewItemIsAvailable.cfm",
contentType: "application/json",
data: JSON.stringify( postData )
})
// When the response comes back, if update is available
//then re-draw the datatable and throw an alert to the user
ajaxResponse.then(
function( apiResponse ){
var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(apiResponse);
if (obj.isUpdateAvail == "Yes")
{
oTable = $('#MY_DATATABLE_ID').dataTable();
oTable.fnDraw(false);
originalNumberOfRecsInDatatable = obj.recordcount;
alert('A new line has been added!');
}
}
);
}
</script>
Coldfusion:
<cfset requestBody = toString( getHttpRequestData().content ) />
<!--- Double-check to make sure it's a JSON value. --->
<cfif isJSON( requestBody )>
<cfset deserializedResult = deserializeJSON( requestBody )>
<cfset numberOFRecords = #deserializedResult.originalNumberOfRecsInDatatable#>
<cfquery name="qCount" datasource="#Application.DBdsn#" username="#Application.DBusername#" password="#Application.DBpw#">
SELECT COUNT(ID) as total
FROM myTable
</cfquery>
<cfif #qCount.total# neq #variables.originalNumberOfRecsInDatatable#>
{"isUpdateAvail": "Yes", "recordcount": <cfoutput>#qCount.total#</cfoutput>}
<cfelse>
{"isUpdateAvail": "No"}
</cfif>
</cfif>
This isn't too difficult. The simple way would be to add via .append:
$( '#table > tbody:last').append('<tr id="id"><td>stuff</td></tr>');
Adding elements real-time isn't entirely possible. You'd have to run an Ajax query that updates in a loop to "catch" the change. So, not totally real-time, but very, very close to it. Your user really wouldn't notice the difference, though your server's load might.
But if you're going to get more involved, I'd suggest looking at DataTables. It gives you quite a few new features, including sorting, paging, filtering, limiting, searching, and ajax loading. From there, you could either add an element via ajax and refresh the table view, or simply append on via its API. I've been using DataTables in my app for some time now and they've been consistently cited as the number 1 feature that makes the immense amount of data usable.
--Edit --
Because it isn't obvious, to update the DataTable you call set your Datatables call to a variable:
var oTable = $('#selector').dataTable();
Then run this to do the update:
oTable.fnDraw(false);
UPDATE -- 5 years later, Feb 2016:
This is much more possible today than it was in 2011. New Javascript frameworks such as Backbone.js can connect directly to the database and trigger changes on UI elements including tables on change, update, or delete of data....it's one of these framework's primary benefits. Additionally, UI's can be fed real-time updates via socket connections to a web service, which can also then be caught and acted upon. While the technique described here still works, there are far more "live" ways of doing things today.
You can use SSE (Server Sent Events) a feature in HTML5.
Server-Sent Events (SSE) is a standard describing how servers can initiate data transmission towards clients once an initial client connection has been established. They are commonly used to send message updates or continuous data streams to a browser client and designed to enhance native, cross-browser streaming through a JavaScript API called EventSource, through which a client requests a particular URL in order to receive an event stream.
heres a simple example
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_serversentevents.asp
In MS SQL, you can attach a trigger to a table insert/delete/update event that can fire a stored proc to invoke a web service. If the web service is CF-based, you can, in turn, invoke a messaging service using event gateways. Anything listening to the gateway can be notified to refresh its contents. That said, you'd have to see if MySQL supports triggers and accessing web services via stored procedures. You'd also have to have some sort of component in your web app that's listening to the messaging gateway. It's easy to do in Adobe Flex applications, but I'm not sure if there are comparable components accessible in JavaScript.
While this answer does not come close to directly addressing your question, perhaps it will give you some ideas as to how to solve the problem using db triggers and CF messaging gateways.
M. McConnell
With "current" technologies, I think long polling with Ajax is your only choice. However, if you can use HTML5, you should take a look at WebSockets which gives you the functionality you want.
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/start-using-html5-websockets-today/
WebSockets is a technique for two-way communication over one (TCP) socket, a type of PUSH technology. At the moment, it’s still being standardized by the W3C; however, the latest versions of Chrome and Safari have support for WebSockets.
http://html5demos.com/web-socket
Check out AJAX long polling.
Place to start Comet
No, you can't have any db code execute server side code. But you could write a service to poll the db periodically to see if a new record has been added then notify the code you have that needs pseudo real-time updates.
The browser can receive real-time updates via BOSH connection to Jabber/XMPP server. All bits and pieces can be found in this book http://professionalxmpp.com/ which I highly recommend. If you can anyhow send XMPP message upon record addition in your DB, then it is relatively easy to build the dashboard you want. You need strophe.js, Jabber/XMPP server (e.g. ejabberd), http server for proxying http-bind requests. All the details can be found in the book. A must read which I strongly believe will solve your problem.
The way I would achieve the notification is after the database update has been successfully committed I would publish an event that would tell any listening systems or even web pages that the change has occurred. I've detailed one way of doing this using an e-commerce solution in a recent blog post. The blog post shows how to trigger the event in ASP.NET but the same thing can easily be done in any other language since ultimately the trigger is performed via a REST API call.
The solution in this blog post uses Pusher but there's not reason why you couldn't install your own real-time server or use a Message Queue to communication between your app and the realtime server, which would then push the notification to the web page or client application.

Is it possible to know whether Windows widget totally covered by other windows?

We want to create a Windows desktop version of our weather widget
There are 2 special things about the widget.
It consumes a lot of processor time
while active - it displays an
animated picture (Flash without GPU acceleration, unfortunately).
It updates the weather from our
server (frequent server requests from all widget users).
When the user does not look at the widget there is no need for animation and weather loading.
So I have an idea of putting my widget to sleep when it is not visible and hense not used.
Is it possible to detect whether the widget is used or not.
Speaking precisely I need to know whether the widget is covered by other windows?
I mostly interested in Vista/7 gadgets engine, however I also would like to know if this problem is solved in these widget engines
Yahoo widgets
Google desktop
Hope to find some desktop widget guru here.
Pasha
If you InvalidateRect and don't get a subsequent WM_PAINT message, than your window is hidden. You can call UpdateWindow after InvalidateRect to force the WM_PAINT message to happen (or not happen) right away.
So you could do something like this
request server data (and cancel request timer if any)
when data arrives InvalidateRect
when WM_PAINT message arrives, draw the data and set a timer for next request
when timer arrives, goto 1
When you stop getting WM_PAINT messages, you stop re-setting your timer, and you therefor stop requesting updates from the server. When the WM_PAINT message happens (because you are no longer covered). You start requesting data again.