CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ember.jswebsocket
Jean
Jean

Reputation: 175

EmberJS and WebSocket | Best Approach?

I have a again which I can't answer for my self properly, maybe because of my lack in expierience with EmberJS.

I have to develop a management interface in EmberJS, using Symfony 2 for the backend, which should act and feel like a desktop application. So far so good, but since alot of people will work with the data inside this application, i would really like to use a WebSocket adapter implementation for EmberJS, since every connected client should always know about changes in entities immediately (or asap). I could write a WebSocket adapter for EmberJS but my problem here is that the WebSocket will do much more then RESTful operations, also the server will send messages without any EmberJS request (e.g. an entity changed and the server broadcasting this change to all clients). That means that i need a "command" structure on top of RESTful operations which, as far as my expierience goes, will not work with a pure DS Adapter.

For example:

Maybe i will trigger a controller method that will send a websocket message like this:

{command: "say", parameters: {message: "Hello guys!"} }

This command is not Entity (DS) related and will never go into the application store.

Another example would be like this:

{command: "load entity", parameters: {type: "Vendor\Bundle\Entity\Type", id: 43} }

Which would load an entity which should be stored in the application store.

Well, as i said, im not that familiar with EmberJS that I could figure out which the best approach could be. Should I bypass the DS Adapter completely and check for "isDirty" and just the push methods after loading entities? I'm happy about any idea you have!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3127

Answers (1)

Flo
Flo

Reputation: 187

As far as I understand your question, you want to push changes from your backend to your single page app?

You can push custom JSON into your application's store in Ember by using self.store.push('modelName', json). Have a look at the docs for a better undestanding.

So for example if your server sends you JSON via websocket that looks like this

{ 
  - "message": {
    "type": "fooModel", 
    "data": {
      ... // Model attributes here 
    }
  }
}

you can push the data into your store. The following snippet would work with SocketIO for example:

App.ApplicationRoute = Ember.Route.extend({                                                              
  activate: function() {                
    // connect to the websocket once we enter the application route                                                                   
    var socket = window.io.connect('http://localhost:8080');                                                           

    var self = this;                                                                                                   

    socket.on('message', function(data){                                                                               
      self.store.push(data.type, data.item);                                                                              
    });                                                                                                                
  }
});

You can easily modify this snippet to fit your needs.

Upvotes: 8

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