Refresh problem

santopernola

I'm coding a php chat and I would like to refresh the chat page without reloading everything but only new messages... Somone told me that this is possible only using JavaScript, is it true?

Thanks in advance 😃

stolzyboy

well it depends on how you are doing it, is this chat written in PHP, then even with JavaScript will it not work, you need to make a server request for PHP to work, you can do this sort of thing in JAVA, that is why most chat's are written in JAVA

maybe give us more of an example of how you are doing this and we may be able to give you a clearer answer

santopernola

It's a bit difficult to explain ^_

I'm using a database table to store chat messages, and the php script accesses to the table, reads the messages and prints everything to the web page.

Using <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="xx; URL=xxx.php"> I can refresh the page to load new messages, but the page reloads completely, blinking for a moment... I think it's possibile to append new messages at the end of the page without full reloading the page...

stolzyboy

not unless you do it in a frame or maybe an iframe (and meta-refresh taht), cuz you still need the php script to access the server to make a request and that involves a reload of the page...

santopernola

Yes I did it in a frame... there's a frame containing only chat messages

stolzyboy

and you did the meta-refresh ONLY in that frame... then that is about all you are gonna be able to do, that's one of the few drawbacks of server side programming, but i can get over that

santopernola

In fact i meta-refresh only that frame... but during the refresh there's a moment in which everything disappears and i don't like that effect very much

stolzyboy

Originally posted by santopernola
In fact i meta-refresh only that frame... but during the refresh there's a moment in which everything disappears and i don't like that effect very much

i hear ya, but like i said, that is a necessary evil of a chat type application when using PHP, Perl, ASP or any server side language

santopernola

I saw an ASP page that refreshes adding ONLY new messages.. without reloading all the others...

stolzyboy

there may be ways of doing it, by using like session data with an array, but with you using a database to use the chat, you need to make a request to the server

i have seen a php chat that does that...and it doesn't refresh, but it isn't gathering anything from a db

santopernola

I can change my script and stop using database to store messages, but I don't know which method I should use... Any advice?

stolzyboy

hmmm...not really, go to www.hotscripts.com and find a decent chat script, then try and disect how they get around it, sometimes re-inventing the wheel is pretty hard when there are hundreds of scripts like that

santopernola

Oh thanks 😃 ... i'll check that out 😉