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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T05:17:27+00:00

I am going to bed soon, so I will not be on until the

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I am going to bed soon, so I will not be on until the morning, but I have been struggling with trying to find a javascript/jquery method that solves my problem. I am trying to make a chat box feature where once a post is submitting it is then echoed back out and users on both ends can see it. I know that I need to use javascript and or jquery. Right now I am using a very inefficiency system: 

<script language='javascript' type='text/javascript'>
    setInterval( function() {
    $('#responsechat').load('echogetconversation.php?username=<?php echo   $username; ?>&otherchatuser=<?php echo $otherchatuser; ?>');
    }, 100);
    </script>

The only reason that I am using it is because it is the only way I know how to project new posts to both users. I was wondering if someone knew a way to do this. Once a post is submitted, it fades into a div and both users can see it, not only the user who submitted it, so it is like a facebook chat in a way. I have no idea about any possible solutions, and have done research, but I could not find any that i could get to work. Any help and/or insight to what I should do next would be appreciated.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    What you are looking for is ajax long pulling, also called Comet (it’s a silly pun). The basic idea is simple–instead of polling the server, you send your ajax request and the server blocks on it until it gets a new message.

    “Blocking” here simply means it does not send a response. You get your request then first up a thread (is that what you would do in PHP? I’ve only ever used node.js for this) and wait until something changes before sending the response back to the client.

    Once the client has a response, it sends another request immediately.

    There is one other trick: requests can time out. This means that the server should send a response back after a certain time even if nothing has updated.

    This methodology is good if you have to support older browsers; if you can ignore those and stick to newer ones, you can use “websockets”.

    There are libraries that help you use websockets or fall back on Comet. I think the most popular one is socket.io.

    Coincidentally, if you’re not tied to PHP, I really suggest using a different server. node.js is a great option–it is a natural fit for this sort of problem and you can write the server-side code in JavaScript, which you already know. Even Facebook–the bastion of PHP–used a different language (Erlang) for their chat backend.

    So, in summary: use socket.io. If you can, try using a different backend, although PHP is fine too.

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