What's the best way to coordinate javascript clients to a single backend game?

Question

What\'s the best method to use to notify javascript client\'s of changes that occur in a game asynchronously (i.e. moves made by other clients). As an example, assume a turn bas

Answer 1

Unfortunately there are only a few options for this. All will involve having some sort of client on the server sending down notifications if you want to use push technology. Or else polling is the way to go.

But just as a tangent here is a solution I played with years ago: http://www.spsolutionscorp.com/blog/2007/03/14/RealTimeUpdatesToWebPageUsingMacromediaFlash.aspx

The gist of it was this: Sql Server with service broker turned on. .Net service on server that is using SqlDependency to listen for changes to query result (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555893). Once change occurred the .net service looped through all connections that had been made from a flash client that I wrote about in the above blog article. Then the flash app could call out to the javascript on the page.

It was a crazy idea and I never put into productions. But depending on your use it might be worth looking into and it was pretty easy to get going.

But again this was a totally crazy idea and again one I never put into production so use at your own risk. Just thought I would share.