From: Pat Maddox <pergesu@...>
Date: 2005-04-03T05:10:22+09:00
Subject: Re: http chat: webrick or roll-my-own webserver?

Have you looked at Ajax?  You could use that to take care of the
asynchronous messaging.


On Apr 2, 2005 12:54 PM, Joe Edelman <joe.edelman@gmail.com> wrote:
> I want to build an HTTP-based chat server.  The idea is that there
> would be one URL to post a message, and another to "listen".  This
> latter request would never completely finish loading in browsers;
> rather, connections would remain open, and posted text would be sent to
> all listening browsers.  There are existing HTTP chat clients that work
> this way.
> 
> Webrick, it seems, is too abstract and servlet-oriented to operate well
> this way.  I need an httpd toolkit at a much lower level -- something
> that will let me keep hundreds of connections open on the listen side
> while quickly dispatching posts on the other side in the same process
> and hopefully in the very same thread.  I also need to become aware of
> when the listening connections are closed, so that I can update the
> chat roster.
> 
> Perl's HTTP::Daemon is well designed for this kind of thing.  Is there
> something similar in ruby-land, or is there someone who knows webrick
> guts well enough to say how to misuse it in this way?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> --Joe
> 
> P.S.  Although I've said "chat" above, in reality I'm going to be
> passing arbitrary javascript messages around, thus creating a platform
> for enabling complex real-time programmatic interaction between all
> users of a site.
> 
>