Portal
The Portal is a server agnostic JavaScript library that not just provides a socket for browser-based applications that need two-way communication with servers, but also aims to utilize a full duplex connection for modern web application development.
All you need to do to use the Portal is to prepare a event-driven server and to implement some server-side code to run transports which application will use. Whether cross-domain connections and browsers are supported or not is depending on transport.
The Portal project is developed and maintained by Donghwan Kim. If you are interested, please subscribe to the discussion group.
References
- API
- Socket Life Cycle and Events
- Supported Transports and Browsers
- Browser Quirks
- Required Server Side Processing
- Advanced Server Side Processing
Features
Server agnostic
Any web app using the Portal can work on any server. All you need to integrate in the server-side is to meet transport prerequisite, write and read some JSON. If you don't like default protocol, you can always implement and use your own protocol. The Portal is flexible enough to accept other protocols.
Full-duplex socket
To provide realtime experience on every browser, various transports such as WebSocket, Server-Sent Events, streaming and long polling are ready to open. They are separated from the socket API, and mimic the full-duplex nature of the ultimate solution of two-way communication, WebSocket.
Event-driven programming
The semantic unit to be sent and be received via socket is the event. Every event is an entry point for business-related logic, and every event handler is a reusable unit of work. With this architecture and event-driven programming model, you can build an understandable and easy to maintain real-time application.
Sharing socket within session
Socket can be shared and used across multiple tabs and windows as long as browser session is alive. If the shared socket closes, the other socket will connect and share itself. In many cases, it will help reduce unnecessary network traffic.
Reply
When result data is needed as result of event handling like response of HTTP request and acknowledgement of receipt of event is needed, when sending event, you can bind callback function or callback event name to be fired with data returned from the server. Using this feature, you can enhance reusability of business logic.
Heartbeat for stable connection
Some transports and servers can't detect disconnection so that applications use a connection time-out to prevent unnecessary network traffic. Heartbeat checks that connection is alive or not regularly. With heartbeat support, you can work with persistent connection without time-out.
Authentication and handshaking
The opportunity to prepare opening connection before connecting to the server is offered. You can do something such as authentication and handshaking, without any restriction, out of the socket life cycle.
Connection scope
Some data are needed to bound to the socket and to reset every time the socket opens. Storing and accessing of those connection-scoped values is supported.