Building the Realtime User Experience: Creating Immersive and Interactive Websites

321 Pages·2010·5.725 MB·English

by  Ted Roden

Building the Realtime User Experience

Building the Realtime
User Experience
Ted Roden
Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo
Building the Realtime User Experience
by Ted Roden
Copyright © 2010 Ted Roden. All rights reserved.
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July 2010: First Edition.
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ISBN: 978-0-596-80615-6
[M]
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Table of Contents
Preface ..................................................................... ix
1. Introduction ........................................................... 1
What Is Realtime? 2
Changing Interactions 2
Push Versus Pull 4
Prerequisites 4
Python 6
JavaScript 6
JavaScript Object Notation 6
Google’s App Engine 6
The Rest 7
2. Realtime Syndication .................................................... 9
Simple Update Protocol (SUP) 11
The SUP file 12
Subscribing with SUP 13
Publishing with SUP 21
PubSubHubbub 26
The Protocol 27
Subscribing with PubSubHubbub 30
Publishing with PubSubHubbub 36
3. The Dynamic Homepage (Widgets in Pseudorealtime) ....................... 39
The Basic Widgets 39
HTML 40
Setting Up the JavaScript 41
FriendFeed in Realtime 48
Live Images 51
It Was All a Setup! 54
The Old Versus the New 55
v
4. River of Content ....................................................... 57
A Crash Course in Server Push 57
Long Polling 58
The Bayeux Protocol 58
Cometd 60
Setting Up Your Cometd Environment 60
Putting Everything in Its Place 62
A Realtime Live Blog 66
The Two-Connection Limit 72
Server-Side Filters (with Java) 73
Integrating Cometd into Your Infrastructure 77
5. Taming the Firehose with Tornado ........................................ 79
Tornado 79
Installing Tornado 80
The Basic Framework 80
Building an Application 82
Asynchronous Tornado in Realtime 84
Twitter’s Realtime Streaming APIs 87
From the Firehose to the Web Browser 91
Templates in Tornado 91
Creating a Template for This Project 93
The JavaScript Parts 96
6. Chat ................................................................ 101
Setting Up the Basic Code 101
The Basic HTML Frame 101
The Python Shell 103
The JavaScript Base 105
Checking the Progress 106
Logging In 107
On the Server Side 107
JavaScript 112
Basic Chatting 117
Chatting on the Server Side 117
Sending Messages 118
Receiving Messages 121
Acting Natural 121
7. Instant Messaging .................................................... 129
Getting Started with Google App Engine 130
Setting Up an Account 130
Creating an Application with the SDK 131
vi | Table of Contents
Taking Advantage of Google 133
Keeping Track of the User 135
The Deploy Button 135
The Dashboard 137
Receiving Instant Messages 138
Sending Instant Messages 141
Responding Intelligently 143
The Basic Commands 143
Checking Authentication via Instant Messenger 145
Introducing a Third Party 146
Setting Up an API 148
8. SMS ................................................................ 153
The SMS Landscape 153
Email to SMS 153
SMS APIs 156
Building the Basic Application 158
Extending the Instant Messaging Application 158
An SMS Service Class 160
The Base Handler 162
Preparing to Accept Messages 163
Setting Up the Server 164
Sending and Receiving the Messages 165
TextMarks 165
Zeep Mobile 172
Authenticating Users 176
Building an SMS API 180
9. Measuring User Engagement: Analytics on the Realtime Web ................ 185
Realtime Analytics Services 185
Chartbeat 186
Woopra 187
Customized Analytics 189
Sending Tracking Pings with JavaScript 189
Catching the Statistics on the Server 193
Making Sense of the Traffic 198
Viewing the Traffic 201
Tracking Backend Traffic and Custom Data 208
Sending Out Alerts 214
10. Putting It All Together ................................................. 217
The Game 217
Caveats 217
Table of Contents | vii
Getting Set Up 218
Google App Engine 218
Google Maps API Key 219
EC2 or Other Hosted Server 220
GeoModel 220
The Basic Models 221
UserInfo 222
Disease 224
Germ 225
CommandCenter 227
Textmark 229
Messenger 230
UserThreats 232
GameUtils 234
Building the Game Itself 235
User Authentication 235
Geolocation 241
Spreading Germs 244
Loading Germs 251
Threats 253
Spreading Germs 267
Fighting Germs 269
Realtime Syndication 271
The Command Center 275
In Review 295
Index ..................................................................... 297
viii | Table of Contents