I am in a situation where I would like to implement Ajax Push in a Java based web app to update things like counts of item in stock on the web page as they change without any interaction from the user. I understand that the technology needed to do this is called Ajax Push. I also have some experience with JSF 2.0, and this is preferred but not required.
First we need a demo showing this in about a couple of weeks, but if the demo is accepted we will have sufficient time to do it right.
I’ve looked around and found that apparently Icefaces do this very well, and I will look into it. I would just like to hear if there happens to exist others which might even be better for us to use?
Please, no “these are the top three hits from Google” answers. I’d like to hear opinions based on experiences.
We have tried both Icefaces (in JSF 1.2 mode) and Atmosphere/Comet with Primefaces.
Icefaces push worked brilliantly out of the box.
We couldn’t get Atmosphere to work (in Primefaces), but this could be because we tried it with the latest (0.6) version, and Primefaces doesn’t support it yet – so now we are waiting for an updated version (it is promised that it will be the next big feature after p:dataTable has been rewritten). In our case the push was not a critical element in the demo and we could easily use polling instead of a real push solution.
Icepush was very easy to get up and running, while Atmosphere is not very well documented (IMHO), and requires a bunch of jars and configurations. It is not for beginners for sure.
So, if ajax:push is a key part of your demo I’d suggest that you stay with JSF 1.2 and Icefaces. At least until the demo is done and the customer is happy – you can still take you time with the Atmosphere configuration after that 😉