I really need your help with this. We are planning on developing a real-time web application. We look at different libraries and concepts and a little confused.
What we need is: clients connect to websites and send data(usually an integer + client machine name) whenever they want (usually 1-5 seconds). Also, the same clients must receive data(the data received from other clients) from the server in a real-time mode. (maximum 0.5 seconds). Also, this data must be stored in the database.
We were thinking about using different technologies, but cannot decide which one to use.
We need this web application to be supported on Iphones and Android Phones (maybe blackberry).
and, of course desktop browsers.
Pooling seems not a very good Idea in this situation, due to highloads.
Html 5 web sockets kinda new, and probably not supported by all browsers.
Have anyone used nodejs ?
or twisted matrix: http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/?
or orbited(cannot post more than one link)?
or tornado?
Or XMPP(Jabber. I did not find good examples.)?
or something else?
What technology is the best to use in this type of project? Also, we would probably prefer the technology that has some community support and free to use.
Thanks a lot!
There is a lot of things to consider here. I would say that HTML 5 is not an option, simply due to support across platform.
Running with NodeJS is most likely possible, but the communication methods are really complicated. Pushing data to a page isn't really something that HTML/web apps are designed to do....
To get a valid answer you are going to need to get someone to come in and sit with you to really iron out details and implementation.
When you say that clients "connect to a website", do you really need it to be a website? It sounds like all the client is sending is a number and for that you don't need a website. Just pick the language of your choice, open up a socket, and go from there.
Are you streaming data to be visualized? You might want to take a look at graphite (and/or "pyped" which is part of graphite).
What kind of data? What is the purpose?
For real-time you're not going to get a web site unless you use some type of RIA but even then, it isn't going to be enough. Services aren't going to be good enough either. You're going to end up doing some type of polling which will only ever be psuedo-real-time unless you do duplex mode which wont be supported on most of the platforms you want to support.
sockets are the way to go but that requires a client for each platform you want to handle. Maybe you should rethink your requirements.
Related
I'm attempting to make a mail client that is HTML5/JS only where users would have to define their mail server and credentials.
I've surfed google leading to dead ends and figured that this is the next best place (or superuser.com).
I was thinking of using HTML5 WebSocket if I could to make the connection to the server but I don't know enough of smtp, imap, or pop3's architecture to understand how javascript could pass the args and perform what I want it to do.
PHP cannot be involved in this project otherwise I wouldn't be asking the question.
Any help in locating this would be fantastic.
Nothing is impossible. Except this.
In standard HTML or JavaScript, you can't make raw-socket connections, which is what you'd need to speak any of the protocols you've listed. The WebSocket API doesn't help you, because the server must also speak WebSockets, and mail servers don't. This is actually all a good thing, though. Imagine if you visited a random website and it telnetted to your home router, setting it on fire and burning down your house. That's what websites would be able to do if they could initiate plain TCP socket connections.
You have a few options I can think of, neither of which involves building a webpage. (And to be clear, you didn't say your project had to be a webpage; you merely said HTML/JS, so these are indeed legitimate options.)
First is something like node-webkit. As the readme says, "You can write native apps in HTML and Javascript with node-webkit." You'll still have to distribute it as a native app, because that's what it is.
Second is a Chrome app, specifically using the chrome.socket API. But have fun writing a TLS layer over those sockets, which you'll find is a requirement for almost any mail server these days. If you succeed in doing that, you'll be able to distribute your mail client in the Chrome Web Store, where I assure you an email client will be quite popular.
Third, write a webserver that operates locally, so your users will visit something like http://localhost:9999/mail in their browser. This will be a real pain to distribute, but you can use almost any technology you want.
I'm sure there's a fourth valid option, and someone else can chime in on that one.
Best of luck.
I was a big fan of AIM and live chat/buddy lists back in the day. With the rise of HTML5 and its use becoming more common in modern browsers, I'd like to develop an HTML5 messaging system.
What technologies do I have to look up? At the start, I won't care about the design (CSS), just functionality.
I'll most likely have a standard registration and store users in a MySQL Database.
Additionally, "friends" will also easily be stored in a database, populating a user's buddy list based on which user ID's he/she has marked as "friend".
The actual server and client connectivity is what most interests me. Is this technology available for HTML5 yet? Point me in the right direction and I'll be good to go!
For the chat, you would probably like to look in to Websockets (as you talk about HTML5).
There are also examples like this where NodeJS is used. To use node, you would have to run a node-server. For examples and more info: nodejs.org
I think the websockets API will be your first port of call for a messaging app in HTML5. You'll be wanting the server to notify the client rather than the client poll or rely on callbacks and this would be the start i think.
However, I don't think this is very well supported in even the most modern browser. In fact i believe firefox and opera have pulled support because of security concerns.
I haven't done any work in this myself but just though it looked interesting stuff. So I guess I just wish you luck with your dev. Exciting cutting edge stuff I think.
I haven't yet determined what the UI would use (flash, HTML, etc.) but I'm curious if you guys think mysql could make for an acceptable socket for a multiplayer poker game? The reason I'm considering using a DB is because that is the only way I know how to accomplish this and I know nothing about XML sockets or anything like that. Would performance be an issue for dialup and slower mobile connections? Could I potentially run into problems with trying to sync user turns and flops? Should I just bite the bullet and go with a different type of socket? If so, what would you suggest and where would be a good place to start educating myself? Thanks.
To make an inline poker game the technology you will use will certainly be the less important problem. The main problem will be in the way you get all subsystems connected between each others and how you ensure security at all levels (from the humans ensuring physical health of you server to the OS envirronment of your players, with maybe some jurists and gunmens -- and that makes a LoooOOot of levels :-) )
But if you want technical considerations I would personnaly use Zend Framework as a PHP library/framework and PostgreSQL as the database. And a really big part of the application would rather be coded in the database, via pl-pgsql things, than in PHP. PHP would be there to provide some ui in different levels (humans, web services, etc), and some of the security levels checks. Ajax interactions would be made with jQuery. No doubt I would prefer PostgreSQl to MySQL for an application with a lot of data, fine security levels, a lot of replications, and a lot of data checks and automatic updates.
PHP / MySQL isn't as fast as some systems (e.g. as ASP.NET) but in slow connections like dialup/mobile that won't be a problem.
The advantage of PHP from my standpoint (which isn't what everyone needs) is that it is very transparent, i.e. you easily control the HTTP transmission and the response. That may be an advantage for you.
I've been playing with HTML5 location lookups recently and its relatively straightforward to pull someones location from a device like an iPhone.
I want to write an app that uses location data, but its important that the location be factual. In other words I need to prevent people from authoring a fake post to the backing website / web service with mocked up GPS coordinates.
Is there anyway to collect GPS coordinates from a mobile device using the HTML5 geolocation apis and securely transmit that back to a web service in a way that someone wouldn't be able to author a post with the same data and "game the system" so to speak?
Not without some serious encryption on the payload on the client. Which if there is money involved, someone will reverse engineer and figure out how to create valid payloads themselves. Remember if there is money or fame involved then somebody will think the effort to do something like this is "worth it". If your web service is public and not using some kind of encryption nothing on the client will ensure that someone with a network connection can't sniff your protocol and fake whatever data they want. And SSL won't cut it. Anyone can proxy the SSL connection on their local network decrypt the payload and inspect it to their hearts content.
No. Completely agree with the answer from fuzzy lollipop. If you’re talking to a remote machine, the data can always be faked. Always always. What makes you certain you’re even talking to a mobile device at all? The User-Agent string? Pfft, it can be faked. Talking to a GPS? Pfft, could be coming from a predefined path. Talking to a web browser? Pfft, could be a bot, or some other malware.
And don’t think encryption (i.e. HTTPS) is going to help you. The client could edit any of your HTML, CSS, or JavaScript on-the-fly — take Firebug or Greasemonkey for example.
The reasons why you can’t trust the client are the same as the reasons why exploits such as SQL or HTML injection are so common. Ever heard the phrase “the customer is always right”? Well, the customer may be right, but the client is always untrustworthy.
The system is there to be gamed. As flaws are discovered, you patch them one by one. It’s more like leapfrog, rather than achieving the holy grail. Bruce Schneier’s quip “security is a process, not a product” comes to mind. Asking for a system that “can’t be gamed” is missing the point. What you need to be doing is creating a system where the server sanitises the data, and/or rejects bad data — fuzz testing is not a bad idea, either.
That’s about the best you can do without shipping custom untamperable mobiles to your customers with the OS in ROM, and the inside sealed with epoxy.
I'm looking for a way to allow a user to upload a large file (~1gb) to my unix server using a web page and browser.
There are a lot of examples that illustrate how to do this with a traditional post request, however this doesn't seem like a good idea when the file is this large.
I'm looking for recommendations on the best approach.
Bonus points if the method includes a way of providing progress information to the user.
For now security is not a major concern, as most users who will be using the service can be trusted. We can also assume that the connection between client and host will not be interrupted (or if it is they have to start over).
We can also assume the user is running a browser of supporting most modern features (JavaScript, Flash, etc)
edit
No language requirements. Just looking for the best solution.
There are several ways to handle this,
1. Flash Uploader
Theres plenty of flash uploaders to improve the users GUI so that they can examine the process and the process factors such as time left, KB Done etc.
This is very good if you understand how to improve Flash source code for later developments.
2. Ajax
Theres a few ways using Ajax and PHP (although PHP Does not support it) you can use Perl module to accomplish the same thing http://pecl.php.net/package/uploadprogress, This is only if you wish to show percentage information etc.
3 Basic Javascript.
This method would be just the regular form, but with some ajax styling so when the form is submitted you can show a basic loader saying please wait while you send us the file...
If your using asp, you can take a look at: http://neatupload.codeplex.com/
Hope theres some good information to get you on your way.
Regards
Not sure about your language requirements, but you can look e.g. into
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/gp.fileupload/
Supports progress information also, btw.
I have used the dojo FileUploader widget to reliably upload audio files greater than a gigabyte with a progress bar. Though you said security was not an issue, I'd like to say that I got HTTPS uploads w/cookie based authentication hooked up flawlessly.
See: http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/09/02/the-dojo-toolkit-multi-file-uploader/ and
http://api.dojotoolkit.org/jsdoc/1.3/dojox.form.FileUploader