Push Server Technology in Ruby On Rails with Juggernaut
July 26, 2008
For an application that requires communication and interactive communication between the users , chatting is one of the most suitable to make you achieve this aspect . A lot of chatting programs are availiable , alot of chatting sites are availiable , but if you want to make a browser based chatting through your application , this might seem to be a little bit complicated.
The main problem is that , Our traditional browsers pulls the page from the server using requests and the server replies with a response , this model is not applicable to use in a browser based chatting application , as what is supposed to happen when client X send the data to client Y ? Client X sends the data to the server then the server pushs this data to client Y , In our traditional model the server can’t send the data to the browser without a request from the client , this puts to us limited choices to implement this , as periodically asking the server for new data which is not efficent and highly costing.
So what is the solution … ? PUSH SERVERS TECHNOLOGY
Push technology, or server push, describes a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction originates with the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull technology, where the request for the transmission of information originates with the receiver or client. A lot of Push Servers have been introduced .. I looked at most of them the most exceptional one , was the Flash Media Server But its not free for more than 10 connected users , and simply you can look at its price to know why its not feasible to be used by startups 🙂 …
So as working with Ruby On Rails , I searched for a neat Ruby On Rails solution , this was the result … Juggernaut Push Server Plugin . This was an excellent solution for me… However let’s take a look at Juggernaut.
Juggernaut is a push server written in Ruby , that can make your application interactively communicate with the server. Juggernaut uses flash objects , javascripts , rails code .
How does Juggernaut work ?
Juggernaut uses a flash object in the browser with a server socket , which makes juggernaut work on almost 90 % of the current browsers , as it only requires flash 8.
Juggernaut Consists of three main parts
- in-browser/client side elements
- a stand alone push server and
- Rails elements to tie everything together.
So this is a simple chat scenario….
- Browser connects to rails server , recieves the required javascripts , SWFs files ( Element 1 )
- The browser creates a flashXML socket with the push server ( used for listening ) ( Element 1 )
- The Client sends the data using AJAX method to a controller. ( Element 3 )
- Rails send the data to the push server using the Juggernaut plugin methods ( Element 3 )
- Juggernaut push server broadcasts the data to the channels ( Element 2 )
- Clients receive the new data using the flashXML socket and updates the dom elements with Javascript ( Element 1)
Juggernaut has different modes of operation , the data can be sent to a certain channel ( no. of users ) Or to a specific user .
Advantages of Juggernaut
- Allows a real time connection with a client – Rails can literally push javascript in real time to the client which is then evaluated.
- Using flash sockets allows us to use different port other than the rails application port , which helps us not to overload the application server with requests which may lead to crash the application , thats why we need a stand alone application server
- Push server – written in Ruby using EventMachine. EventMachine has a non-blocking IO so scales very well
- Integrated, as a plugin, into Rails.
- Subscribers can subscribe to multiple channels, and broadcasters can broadcast to multiple channels.
- Broadcasts can be made to channels, or to a specific client.
- Connect/Disconnect triggers.
- Authentication support.
- Uses Flash 8 – installed on more than 95% of computers.
- Supports all the major browsers (uses ExternalInterface): Firefox 1+, IE 6+ and Safari 2+
My friends and I made juggernaut plugin to add a secured chatting sessions to juggernaut using RSA or DES encryption algorithms , I’ll write a blog post about it soon.
So How can I use juggernaut..
This is a very good tutorial about installing and using Juggernaut in your application , it is quite straight forward in linux , but it has some problems in installation with windows and it solved here
Hope this was helpful