Can someone illustrate how I can get typing status of the other party with JavaScript?
UPDATE
Can someone recommend a one-to-one open source chatting application, preferably written in PHP? I only found open source chatting rooms which are for chatting among all onliners, but I just need a one-to-one chatting.
Here are a list of PHP-based open-source instant messaging software.
Some of those might be relevant for you.
For example, if you had an text area #chat then you could use this code to attach the event:
document.getElementById('chat').addEventListener('keydown', FUNCTION HERE, false);
See http streaming and some ready solutions here: http://ajaxpatterns.org/HTTP_Streaming
this is how google talk does it. And there are ready php or c++ solutions
It was quie a discovery for me!
This is an update to reflect the significant change in the OP's question:
Google Chat and Facebook both use XMPP(jabber) servers, as do most companies I know of that have internal instant messaging.
The nice part about XMPP is that you get all of the "is typing" and other presence-based information without having to roll-your-own in javascript (bear in mind, you will still need to use javascript to pass XMPP requests back to the server, but XMPP has most of the features you'd need already built in).
Check out OpenFire. It's a great XMPP server, totally open source, and they have a web-based version of their Spark client that is pretty nice.
Or you could get a PHP library for XMPP (there are a few). But you'd still need to have the XMPP server running in the background for PHP to work with.
Here's a list of XMPP libraries for PHP from XMPP.org:
Eiffel
JAXL
Lightr
Missus
xmpphp
Or, if you want to keep things mostly browser-side, they also have a list of libraries for javascript:
dojox.xmpp
js.io
JSJaC
strophe.js
xmpp4gwt
xmpp4js
I made a small chat application a while ago, and the only way to do it is to frequently check for new entries in the chat database and fetch anything newer than the last displayed message. At the same time as all that, you can check to see if the user's input is empty. If it is, do nothing. If it isn't, enter a status code into the database beside that user's name. If anyone has that status in the database when you're fetching information about new messages and who is online, you should display the 'user is typing' message. I hope that makes sense...let me know if it isn't.
For User1: If you save the chat message on each key-press to the database, with a status: sent=false and update the last updated date.
For User2: you could pole periodically for the presence of a message where sent=false and use the last updated to update user is typing message. if the lastupdated date is more than a say ten seconds you could remove the message as that person may have stopped typing. This will allow User2 to see User1 typing, stopping and continueing again.
Ideally polling for this information will be part of an existing call to the database to reduce additional overhead.
Related
I'm trying to build a simple live chat for my website, I already have everything set up, meaning databases, login and log out system, forms, displaying the database values in chat form.
The only thing I'm missing is implementing the live refresh function so users don't have to manually refresh the site to see new messages.
I'm a little lost, could you give me some guidance?
I'm guessing I have to add a specific javascript call whenever a message is sent, or the "send" button is pressed to be more specific, then that would call back a function to refresh the chat for every participant. Not sure where to start or which code to use.
Essentially, you have 2 ways to implement this.
Using a polling technique with ajax request which will grant you a greater compatibility, but you will have to much more work to implement it. I don't really consider it for most cases nowadays, because it could be very inefficient.
Using a socket mechanism, you can use web sockets for a out of the box solution, most browsers have support for it nowadays For third party libraries you can use socket.io which can fall back to web socket yet it grants a little bit for features out of the box, like channels, which you would benefit from. Lastly, for a third party service, you can use firebase/firestore which they have a realtime database, so whenever a change happens, you get notified.
I would recommend using either the web socket approach (native) or using a wrapper/library like socket.io. If you go with Socket.io, there are a lot of tutorials out there that build chats with that library, so you can get a working sample really fast.
I am building a messaging app that updates in realtime. So far I can log in with google and post a message and then that message displays on screen. however, if I log in via another google account (the app is hosted on heroku) and post a message as userB then userA won't see this message on their screen until they refresh the page. what is the best way to update all screens in real time so people can actually have a conversation in real time.
every message is posted and stored in the firebase. my only solution so far requires using the javascript setInterval method and pulling from the database every 3-5 seconds. this worked however it caused the app to become very slow and laggy and a poor experience. any pointers/tips are welcomed
You are using the Firebase and its one of the main feature is the real-time database. Firebase will automatically let you know if there is any change in your JSON database. You no need to send the request in interval basic.
You can refer Zero to App: Develop with Firebase - Google I/O 2016 It is also a messaging app demo by the Google Guys.
You can find the sample source code in Github to send and receive the message in real-time.
There are a lot of ways to do this. Generally, you will want to be notified by the server once a new message has come in and not have to ping the server every X seconds.
You could look at these:
socket.io and learn about websockets in general
A nice list of existing chat apps that utilize react
Google's cloud messaging, as you already use firebase, this might be the way to go for you here.
This should lead you in the right direction.
hello as described from the title above , I have a website where users enter their datas to the database so what I'm looking for now is when a data is inserted to the database for each user he will receive a desktop notification just like the one of facebook , I know how html5 desktop notifications works but I don't know how to make it work for each user when new data is inserted to database, Please I need someone to guide me.
thanks
You can do it with COMET Programming or Socket Programming. My choice would be Comet Programming because it's easier than Sockets. Now what you are going to do is just you will change a files last edit time, believe or not that's all. The algorithm is easy, you will create a php file for this purpose everyone will connect this file via Javascript and you will get your results when anyone inserts data.
You can check Comet Programming here :
http://www.zeitoun.net/articles/comet_and_php/start
By the way Facebook is still using COMET Programming for every notification,time-line operations and message operations.Also Gmail using it for Live Mail System.
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.
I have a online user list which is populated by a SQL query to a database table.
When a new user comes online, how can i make the webpage automatically update?
What code do I need to provide?
Thanks
There are a few ways you could do this, but I'll avoid the most tempting WebSockets HTML5 new-ness and suggest the following:
When a user logs on, record the fact that they are logged on to the database.
From your page, poll a service or web page method that lists online users.
If the list changes, update the part of the page that shows the users.
That's the rough outline of what to do. If you need specifics please say what server-side host and programming language you are using. From the client side, please also mention what JavaScript framework you'd prefer or are open to.