

Ask HN: Fastest way to build live chat? - h34t

I'm working on an app requiring live one-to-one chat amongst users, presence, and other real-time functionality.<p>My app uses rails/backbone.js/MongoDB, and for real-time stuff I've been using PusherApp, but it has limitations--the biggest one being no easy way for my server to know which users are online (to indicate presence).<p>What's the fastest way to get this sort of thing done?<p>I've been looking into learning how to write something in Node.js/socket.io, or use a service like BeaconPush, PubNub, or Kwwika (and keeping my code in ruby w/ EventMachine).
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cgbystrom
(Disclaimer: I'm the project lead on Beaconpush)

Beaconpush is a good alternative for doing this. We support user presence and
you can use the API to find out what users are connected. You can even log out
users from the API.

We have a contributed Ruby library (called Dimma) made by one of our users.
Don't think it's EventMachine based though. Read more at
<https://github.com/Burgestrand/Dimma>

node.js with socket.io is also a nice alternative. Played with it somewhat
myself and I like it! But hosting it yourself will make you deal with scaling,
deploying, uptime and hosting in general. Not exactly stuff you want to focus
on when developing things on a tight schedule.

So if you're asking me, I'd naturally say Beaconpush (<http://beaconpush.com>)
:)

~~~
h34t
Cool. BeaconPush is probably also the easiest solution for me to migrate to.

Any idea when webhooks will be ready? (That would seem to me to be the easiest
way to keep the server up-to-speed with who's online?)

------
mloughran
Have you tried the presence functionality described on
<http://pusherapp.com/docs/presence> ? It doesn't cover all use cases, but for
the cases it covers, we think it does a pretty great job! Disclaimer: I'm from
Pusher :)

------
h34t
Also found: Using node.js, backbone.js, socket.io, and redis to make a real
time chat app <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2306423>

