Server Sent Events

A short talk on Server Sent Events given for the San Francisco HTML5 User Group.

Transcript

1. Server Sent Events or EventSource
2. Gilles De Mey @gdemey on Twitter or App.net
3. Gilles De Mey @gdemey on Twitter or App.net Senior student
4. Pushing the web forward Pushing notifications or continuous data streams from the server to the client.
5. EventSource • Simplex communication • FROM server TO client • HTTP protocol • Browser automatically reconnects
6. Why Server Sent Events? • Dead simple protocol • No need for huge 3rd party libraries • Almost no overhead • Works great on mobile connections (3G, EDGE, ...)
7. Great for... • Realtime Data Analytics • System Observations • Patient Monitoring
8. Demo http://localhost:1338
9. Technologies • Event loop • Node.js • Twisted (Python) • Juggernaut (Ruby)
10. Technologies • Needs the event loop! • Will switch to AJAX polling
11. Shortcomings? • Modern browser only (Polyfill!) • No cross-domain support • One direction
12. What I’ve learned • Real-time web applications can exist • Requires little effort
13. Want to know more? Talk to me
14. Want to know more? Talk to me Github: https://github.com/gillesdemey/node_analytics Heroku: http://node-analytics.herokuapp.com