Question

Am not sure if what I am doing is absolutely correct. But here goes:

1. User logins into chat via web-based interface
2. User is informed of updates via Comet
3. User enters details which goto a PHP file which further connects to a Jabber server

Now the problem is that when the user wants to send a message, it’s simple, run php in which i connect to jabber server and send the message. The problem arises when I am waiting for a message. Cause if I login and check messages and disconnect, on the other users end I will show up as disconnected.

Am I approaching this problem in a wrong way? Should I directly connect to the Jabber server (via javascript) instead of a PHP layer in between? How to recieve messages via PHP?

Answer 1

this is an inherent problem (or feature) with http – there are no lasting connections (not really). you need a workaround, there is no real solution.

you could do it with java or flash, but that’s not really nice (javascript 4tw!).

the other possibility would be to create an intermediate client what translates connections between the browser and the webserver to connections between the webserver and the jabber server. messy, but possible.

or maybe there is an API that helps with this.

directly connecting to the jabber server via javascript
i possibly slept through the latest ajax-inventions, but afaik you can only communicate with the host the source-html file comes from (ignoring greasmonkey and addons). no different domains, no different ports, period. unless you’re going to teach your jabber server how to serve your chatpage-html to the browser, this will get problematic. moreover, staying connected doesn’t even work, because that would require multipart-responses. those are only supported by mozilla, and this is why the ugly duckling COMET even exists in the first place. comet itself is a workaround to avoid the inability to hold connections while transfering data.