node.js running alongside Apache PHP?

Question

I am trying to get my head round node.js...

I am very happy with my LAMP set up as it currently fulfils my requirements. Although I want to add some real-time features i

Answer 1

I suspect the chat as well as the logged in listing would work via Ajax.

The chat part would be pretty easy to program in Node.js, use one of the mysql modules for Node to connect to your existing database and query login information and such and then do all the actual chatting via Node.js, I recommend you to check out Socket.io since it makes Browser/Node.js communcation really trivial, this should allow you to focus on the actual chat logic.

Also, you could take a look at the "official" chat demo of Node.js, for some inspiration.

As far as the currently online part goes, this is never easy to implement since all you can do is to display something along the lines of "5 users active in the last X minutes".

Of course you could easily add some Ajax that queries the chat server and display the userlist from that on the homepage.

Or you completely crazy and establish a Socket.io connection for every visitor and monitor it this way, although it's questionable whether this is worth the effort.