Really stumped at this point. Help?

PallinWolf

Okay, so here's a quick rundown: I designed a chat system about 5 years ago and I've got it all tweaked and performing pretty good these days. I'm constantly adding new features and whatnot and I have one now that I simply can't seem to figure out.

In that chatroom, the user has two choices with how he/she wants to enter: frames or no frames.

No frames mode is just a simple one page deal where pressing the "send" button displays all the new messages or if he/she input a message, it places it along with the others.

Frames version runs pretty much the same way, only the top frame has a "reload" button that displays the messages whereas the bottom frame is where the input box is.

Now, on to my problem: I want to create a third version called "Streaming". Basically, this version will work the same as frames mode except there will be no need for the "reload" button in the top frame: the page will 'stay alive' somehow and print the new messages as they are received by the mySQL database, automatically.

I've played around with flush() and I've also done some investigation of maybe using httprequest and AJAX but I'm not very familiar with either method and I've grinded to a hault in my quest to pull this off.

Does anyone have any ideas/methods/suggestions/examples?

madwormer2

Making a chat script is pretty much the "hello world" of AJAX, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a grasp of. Especially if you use a javascript framework to handle the nitty gritty of it all.

There should be quite a few tutorials out there for this sort of thing, so if you do get stuck there's always those to take a quick reference of.

The way that I'd do it is first grab a framework like prototype js, or dojo etc. and brush up on their AJAX functions. The script page will use a periodic updater (setTimeout or an implementation in the framework) to ask a php file if there are any new lines, and if there are then the lines of html can be appended easily to the bottom of the chat window. Auto scroll to the bottom, and that's pretty much it.

PallinWolf

madwormer2;10883665 wrote:
Making a chat script is pretty much the "hello world" of AJAX, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a grasp of. Especially if you use a javascript framework to handle the nitty gritty of it all.

There should be quite a few tutorials out there for this sort of thing, so if you do get stuck there's always those to take a quick reference of.

The way that I'd do it is first grab a framework like prototype js, or dojo etc. and brush up on their AJAX functions. The script page will use a periodic updater (setTimeout or an implementation in the framework) to ask a php file if there are any new lines, and if there are then the lines of html can be appended easily to the bottom of the chat window. Auto scroll to the bottom, and that's pretty much it.

Cool, thanks for the reply with some solid ideas! AJAX is pretty foreign to me at this point but from everything I'm reading it would appear that would be the easiest and server-friendly way to pull it off.

Anyone else got any ideas or suggestions?

NogDog

Anyone else got any ideas or suggestions?

Suggestion: In the future, use more descriptive thread titles in order to ensure that those who might have both the requisite knowledge and interest in the subject of your question actually take the time to view your thread. 😉

PallinWolf

NogDog;10883739 wrote:
Suggestion: In the future, use more descriptive thread titles in order to ensure that those who might have both the requisite knowledge and interest in the subject of your question actually take the time to view your thread. 😉

Good point, I'll update the title. Thanks!