div popup when there is new updates available - javascript

I've implemented RSS Feed for my application . But , I want that there should be a new updates like Facebook new notification arrives while you are logging on, I mean it depends on user he/she want to see that notification or not.
So , I just want that kind of div appearance . Is there any plugin for that in javascript/jquery?

What you are looking for is called long polling.
Basically, your client javascript requests the update from the server, but the server keeps the connection open and answers not until update data is available.
This is the most gentle way of doing this, but the implementation depends on your server side framework/language.
See this link for a good introdcution: http://techoctave.com/c7/posts/60-simple-long-polling-example-with-javascript-and-jquery
The other option you have is setting a timer in javascript and poll every once in a while the server for updates.

Related

How do I push mongodb data?

So I have developed a web app as a hobby on Handlebars, Express and Mongoose/MongoDB.
The app let's users create an account and then post advertisements for other users to see and respond to.
All the ads posted by users show up on the index page. So it is common view for all the users on this web app. I am relatively new to web development so to build such a simple app it took me a while but boy I learned a lot!
Now the issue I am facing is, when a user A posts an Ad while the user B is logged in and is currently on the index page (a page that lists all the ads posted) it won't show up for user B unless user B refreshes the page. Rightly so actually because only when the index page's route is hit it will query all the ads and refreshing is basically hitting the index route I get that. But I don't want it that way. I want it to show the new ad on user B's index and pretty much every user's index if there's new ad by any user.
So I did a little research/reading and I learned that I can do it by learning to work with triggers on mongodb and like create some kind of trigger that when a new ad is posted do something. I like the idea but failed to find resources to learn how to use such a thing.
The other option I was suggested was to use socket.io but that too I can't grasp how can I make an entire Ad document work as a socket. I am lost and implementing this feature of dynamically loading ads for all users will complete this hobby project of mine and will help me find a junior dev job in local community.
I request stackoverflow's community to guide me how do I go about doing this and what resources I can use to learn about it.
The socket.io seems to be the best solution for your case. What you will want to do with socket.io is every time a user posts an Ad you use socket.io to notify the rest of the users that there is an update.
If you don't want to send the entire document using the socket you can use the socket to notify the clients and on the client side every time you receive such a notice from the server you will either
a) Refresh the page(not suggested as it will make the user experience unpleasant) which is easier to implement
OR
b) You can use an Ajax request to get the new data from your server and update the fields on the fly(which makes for a better user experience).
Best Way You can come with using Short Polling concept from client side to ask for new data after 1 or 2 seconds (whatsoever count to need ) . Gmail for new inbox mails also uses sync method in a particular fashion . Just ask from server for new data
OR Second option to go through below
On Server Side
Serve index.html page to User A (which is logged in now).Some User B inserts data
Maintain a function or a cron job (checks the count of Total Ads ) Lets say after every 1 minute or so
If there is change in count from the previous total_count , update it and get new mlab documents and send it to function , Let's say push_new_ads which will be sync via socket.io to client
On Client Side
Sync your client_total_count with server_local_count push_new_ads using socket.io and If there is change in count , make a simple fetch api call to get data and appends it to previously fetched array
There is no such way to directly listen the changes in mongodb But you can trigger some changes from oplog using tailable cursors

Proper way to detect user's leaving page

I am building a WebApp (ERP) and I need to display the people currently logged in and active on the page. I managed to get something pretty accurate by listening on the mouse/keyboard events and periodically reporting to the DB.
I don't know how to mark people offline when they close the page. I tried using onbeforeunload, but it obviously fires when the user simply changes pages (click a link inside the ERP, that point to another page in the ERP).
I then tried to use WebSockets, but the problem is the same : everytime the page is realoded, the WebSockets connection is closed.
So I can think of two ways:
Use WebSockets indeed, and replace all links by a call to a javascript function that would somehow tell the server that the user is going to change page (so that the server doesn't mark it as offline). But that doesn't feel right, semantically speaking, links should be links, it simply points to another location.
Use either WebSockets or AJAX and never actually change page: links are replaces by a function that will call for the content, and display it on screen (updating the DOM with Javascript). But again, it doesn't feel right either, because semantically speaking the page would have no meaning and the URL would never change, so the user can't "copy paste" the link of the page to refer to it, right ?
So, is there a proper, clean way of doing this? Thanks for your help.
If each of your pages has a webSocket connection to your server, then on the server you can see when any given page is closed by seeing that the webSocket gets closed.
To avoid thinking that a user has left the site when they are just navigating from one page in your site to another, you simply need to add a delay server-side so that you only report that the user has left your site if there has been no webSocket connection from this user for some time period (probably at least a few seconds).
So, on your server when you detect that the last webSocket connection for this user has been closed, you set a timer for some number of seconds. If the user opens up another page on your site (either via navigation or just opens another page) before the timer goes off, you cancel the timer and count the user as still connected. If the timer goes off, then you now know that the user has been away from your site for whatever time period you picked (say 10 seconds) and to you, this will signify that they have left the site. You can control how long you want that time period to be before you decide that, yes they are gone.
All attempts at trying to "see" the user leaving your page IN the browser with Javascript are going to have holes in them because there are always ways for a web page to get closed without your client-side javascript having a chance to tell your server. The beauty of the webSocket solution is that the browser automatically and reliably tells your server when the page is now gone because it closes the webSocket and your server receives the notification that the socket has been closed.
As I understand you want to compute users active on website/pages.
Identify the user (99% unique id computed):
http://valve.github.io/blog/2013/07/14/anonymous-browser-fingerprinting/ you can use another library, there are few.
On each page send from time to time at page load meaning user is navigating or (60sec you can chose lower time frame meaning user is staing on the page) computed id (fingerprint js) to server (web-socket/ajax)
On server you need to have list of id's with expiration date (60s) increment when new user log's in (stored in database or session).
Retrieve on your website the count (60sec ajax/websocket) of id's having timestamp <= server time - let say 120sec.
Knowing if user is logged, and specify the page:
use an object to be sent at server {fingerprint: 123123124234, logged : true, page: home}
Clear your list if you are not storing in Database the users:
Separate thread (server only) access the object and destroy all nodes older then 10 min or whatever your page session is set.
js timer: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/met_win_setinterval.asp
Let hope it's helpful, id did something similar using the timer at 5 min to sent to server if user is still on the page, or signal at page load.
Getting the cont of users in frame of 60 sec. And even the users with names present on page :)
Somebody already post this kind of question.
Hope this could help you .
Detect if user has closed ALL windows for a website?

How to handle this typical case of WebSocket usage?

I wrote a web page where there is a zone for user's comments.
Any authenticated users could post a comment.
As many users could post comments almost simultaneously, I want the comments list to be auto-refreshed.
Thus, I think about using WebSockets.
My thought are about a good/best practice for this use case:
Once a comment is posted, should WebSockets process read the current comments list on database and send a Json response containing all the new comments? This would allow the client to directly append the new comments on the DOM (JS).
Or should WebSocket just check the database (or queue if using a message queue (Redis, RabbitMQ etc..) for instance) and act just like: "Hey, I have new comments, click here if you want to see them !". This solution would only signal the presence of new comments, without bringing all those comments to the client. The workflow of retrieving the events would then involve by the client (by clicking on this sentence for instance) e.g using the traditional Ajax direction: client => server.
It is highly possible that a user posts a comment, then navigates to another page of the website. Therefore, a websocket response containing the whole new comments would be useless. A simple notification would then be possible, as most of known websites do for instance with the "+1" counter or more relevant to the "comments" scenario: "1 new comment available".
Which way should I choose?
I think to decide which data to push is mostly a matter of UI usability / user experience, as opposed to which technology is being used to interact with the server. We should avoid changing the UI with server pushed data in a way that would surprise the user in a negative way, for example having the comment feed constantly growing without any intervention from him.
But in the case of a realtime chart, it's probably better to push the data directly into the chart, that would be what the user expects.
In the case of the comment feed the reason why most sites go with the 'click to load' approach is because of user experience, so I think that is probably the best approach.
I use a combination of both....
In some pages the websocket communication contains the actual data--sort of like a stock ticker update.
And in other cases, the websocket communication just says -- all users viewing xyz data--refresh it. And then the browsers performs an ajax to obtain the new data and the grid is smartly refreshed in such a way that only the changed cells are modified on screen using innerHTML and the new rows are added and deleted rows are removed.
In cases like stackoverflow, it makes sense to show a message, "Got new stuff to show--want to see it?"
When I establish the websocket in the browser, I pass a page Id in the url and the cookies are passed too. So websocket server knows--the user cookie and the page which is being viewed.
Then in the database (or middle tier logic) communicates to the websocket server with messages such as: This message is for users viewing 'xyz' page: smartly refresh grid 'abc'. And the websocket server broadcasts the message.
Because the protocol allows you to pass anything you like, you have the ability to make it anyway you like.
My advise it to do what's best in each particular situation.

Javascript Best Practise: Syncing Browser Windows

I have an html5/javascript application in which multiple users can be viewing the same set of data of any given time. For the sake of a real world example, lets say its a calendar type page.
So user1 is looking has the browser open and looking at the calendar page and user2 is also on the calendar page. User2 makes a change to the calendar and i'd like (as quickly as possible) for those changes the be recognized and refreshed on user1's screen. What is the best way to do this?
I'm thinking about have a mysql table for active users that stores the page they are currently on and a timestamp for its last update, then use ajax calls to ping the server every few seconds and check for an updated timestamp, if its newer than what they have client side, the new data gets sent and the page "reloaded." I am putting reloaded in quotes because the actual browser window will not be refreshed, but a function will be called via javascript that will reload the page. Sort of the way stack overflow performs its update checks, but instead of telling the user the page has changed and providing a button for reload, it should happen automatically. If user1 is working away on the calendar, it seems it might be quite annoying for user2's screen to constantly be refreshing...
Is this a horrible idea? Is pinging the server with an ajax request every few seconds going to cause major slow downs? Is there a better way to do this? I would like the views on either users side to be real time because its important that user1 not be able to update an element on the calendar page that user2 has already changed.
Update: based on some web sockets research it doesnt seem like a proper solution. First its not compatible with older browsers and i support ie8+ and second i dont need real time updstes for all users on the site. The site is an account based applicatiin and an account can have multiple users. The data needs to sync between those users only. Any other recommendations would be great.
You need realtime app for this. You should have a look at socketio. Everytime a user log in, you make him listen for changes on the server. Then when something changed on the server, every users listening are notified.
you can find examples on the official website : http://socket.io/

How to pull new post and comments

I am currently developing a website where many users post topics and the associated topics' comments are shown in the page. Currently I'm developing using cake php.
The very first time a user clicks the website, all the topics and comments are displayed. But when other users add new topic or comment to a topic, I need to show the update in the same page. I am confused as in how am I able to retrieve new contents and update accordingly in a page. For instance how facebook does it where when your friends adds status or comments on your status, it updates without refreshing the page.
I know that AJAX technology is used but how is it done. Any source that I can refer? Hope someone can help as I have been doing research for the past one week but no answers so far.
You can go two routes in this.
Server Push
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology
This technique is perhaps the most efficient as the server notifies the client of any updates. However this technique usually requires a bit more work than a simple polling system. You can use something like nodejs or Comet to push updates. If you're using nodejs, I highly recommend using SocketIO to handle the client side. With Socket.io you can have the client side listening to the server on a channel so that the server can notify the client whenever an update happens.
Client polls server
In this version, the client (new visitors browser) constantly polls the server for updates. You can set whatever gap you want, but keep in mind that if you make the polling gap too small your server might take a performance hit as each new user will create many requests. This method is as simple as setting up a setInterval() call in JS coupled with an AJAX call.

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