I'm building a Rails app where I need a real time commenting system. I'm going to use WebSockets, but I'm new to them and I'm kinda lost. I tried em-websockets and websocket-rails, but neither worked well with what I have to do. I also though of a Node.JS and Socket.io app, but I don't know how to start with that.
What I want to do is send a WebSocket message when a new comment is made on a post, on the create action of my CommentsController. I'll send a message containing the comment content and creator and the post ID.
Thanks in advance! :D
Sorry, but I dont think so. Be careful with WebSockets. It is fundamental concept that provides a very powerful mechanism.
Websockets is good for super, absolutely real-time applications like online games. For commenting system (even realtime) you dont need them, the AJAX is more then enought for this.
Just using websockets as the only available transport is not a good idea, because websockets are not yet supported in every browser. Luckily for example Faye does support multiple transports so that it will work in every browser. I also found this interesting video in the past explaining how you could use Faye in conjunction with RoR from RailsCast.
You could use a realtime hosted service if you don't want to deal with your own realtime infrastructure, fallbacks for older browsers, scaling complications etc.
I recently wrote a post on Smashing Mag on building a realtime commenting system. It uses PHP and Pusher (who I work for) but the separation between client and server should meant that you could use any backend technology/service. It also demonstrates how to progressively enhance your app.
The most commonly used self-hosted ruby technologies for realtime communication does seem to be Faye, as @Alfred suggested.