[wp-hackers] WordPress and Websockets

[Braydon]

Hosting limitations is a big issue and not just with websockets, PHP, 
and WordPress. Python written websites have been dealing with at for 
some time also, not too many hosting options outside of a VPS and 
dedicated, which is a bummer when what is really needed is a lot of 
storage space more than processing and software control.

On 09/22/2011 10:00 AM, Dagan Henderson wrote:
> Unfortunately, I think the handicap here is (and will be for quite some time) hosting services. I'd love to be able to run something like socket.io, but until hosting services catch up, I don't think we'll see much, if any, websocket use in the WordPress core.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wp-hackers-bounces at lists.automattic.com [mailto:wp-hackers-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Braydon
> Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 10:20 PM
> To: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] WordPress and Websockets
>
> They were doing reverse ajax, "comet", a couple years ago, by holding an xhr open for a long time without needing websockets. You would still need to have a long running PHP process running....
>
> This seems like something better done in another language, if maintaining WordPress interface, you could write something just for the front-end entirely in Node.js? I'm really curious to do something in this area.
>
> On 09/20/2011 02:21 PM, Eric Mann wrote:
>> I've bounced this idea on the WordPress StackExchange, in the support
>> forums, and informally to a few other developers via Twitter and
>> in-person at WordCamp Portland.  I have yet to hear a solid answer,
>> though ... so I wanted to bounce it by here, too.
>>
>> I'm working on a plugin that, ideally, would make use of websockets to
>> communicate between the front-end and the WordPress backend.
>> Basically, whenever a post is published on the backend, it should
>> trigger an event on the front-end for other users.  This can be done
>> using old school AJAX and long polling, but the point is more to make
>> use of the cutting-edge technology than to fall back on "what works."
>>
>> Unfortunately, most users are running WordPress on an Apache server
>> ... and Apache doesn't natively support websockets.  There are some
>> modules you can add to make it work, but that's not an option for
>> people running WP on a shared host.
>>
>> One option I have is to use Apache anyway.  It can be forced to work
>> with websockets using a few PHP scripts I found, but once the
>> websocket is open you essentially steal a persistent connection to
>> Apache (which is itself a blocking process).  So while this would
>> work, and would probably work well for low-traffic sites, it could
>> easily lock up an ill-configured server or crash someones system.
>>
>> Another option is to host the websocket part of the system on my
>> server (where I can use Nginix, Node.js, or any other
>> websocket-friendly server) and have the plugin interface with my
>> server.  The downside here is that my system then becomes the bottleneck ...
>>
>> My question to you: which option would you take?  Try to make due with
>> installed software, or move the mission-critical part of the
>> application to your own box?  Does anyone have experience implementing
>> websockets in WordPress already?  Is there something I'm missing?
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>>
>>
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