How to push new HTML data from the server to the browser without refreshing the page

Question

I have seen many websites (facebook or stack overflow for instance) that will update certain features as new data is generated (new answer on a post for example).

L

Answer 1

Well,

If you are in the PHP and Open Source world, you can consider Node.Js, Socket.IO or NowJs

I am in the ASP.Net wonderworld and I love SignalR.

Answer 2

You can use HTML5 SSE. But that's not a very good solution.

You can use Comet server that helps in Long AJAX polling. Check out the Ajax Push Engine (APE). It's a combination of Comet Server and a Javascript framework to make AJAX-PUSH or real time streaming possible.

cheers! :)

Answer 3

One example of a framework that can help you do this is SignalR http://signalr.net/

This is asp.net specific though

Answer 4

Great question! There's a few solutions.

There's been a relatively new solution to this call websockets. It's in the HTML5 standard and there's a lot of libraries for it on other languages too.

One of them is sockets.io ( javascript ) - it enables you to keep a consistent, low-latency connection with a server to receive information as it's generated. There's also plenty of plugins for php, c, and python for the server side.

To name a few: libwebsockets ( c++ ), pywebsockets ( python ), and jetty ( javascript )

And for php: http://socketo.me/

Visit this link for more info: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/websockets/basics/