I am about to make a decision for a collaborative editing application. I investigated about websockets, and frankly I am confused. Here my findings so far:
- There are loads of articles about websockets - but many are dated 2009, 2010...Often there's info that websockets are not fully functional in all browsers and/or that implementations are crappy...What's the status today?
- There are plenty of frameworks around - but mostly for node. Our application is in RoR, and Eventmachine/em-websocket looks like a year old - will it still be up for today's requirements?
- Socket.io, SockJS, meteor...there are so many and I won't be able to try them all, but I did some first trials with SockJS. Our app is collaborative editing of binary data; multiple users might be editing the same document, and multiple users may be working on different documents at the same time. Thus, scalability is key; SockJS seems not to scale over more than one server (sticky sessions). Also, clients would need updates from peers - do I need broadcasting facility? Would I need redis for this?
I guess my questions then boil down to this:
- For our app, should I use websockets directly and customize or use a
framework?
- If a framework, which one is recommended more for our specific needs?
I know these questions are a bit vague but I really first of all would like to get an up-to-date understanding of where technology is to make some sound decisions.
Thank you!
