Basically, I have created a NODEJS app that uses Jade as its templating engine, along with Express and a MySQL database.
I am looking to create a new page which allows user to share a portion of text, and then a div underneath it named "Wall" will update dynamically with the new status.
Basically, it would ideally be similar to Facebook where something is typed, shared and then the page updates below dynamically. I'm also looking to have the wall page update when a new post have been shared from a users friend. All updates shared by the users would be sent to a database.
I have conducted a lot of searches but seem unable to gather a right answer. I have narrowed it down to the use of either of the following: JQuery, Ajax, PHP.
Since the site I am building is built in JS - what is my best option?
I'm pretty new to all of this, but I assume when a user clicks share it calls a JS file which then stores the update in the database. But how do I get my "Wall" to refresh upon new content?
Any help greatly appreciated.
Use...
setTimeout(function(){
/* update wall here */
}, 1000)
to poll your "Wall" backend and updated the content.
You've posed a conceptual question. So I'll do my best to explain some of the conceptual options you can choose to further explore and do your own research on how to best implement it with your project.
You have two paths to go here. You can have your own wall update (do a refresh / re-render on the UI side) upon a successful AJAX write to your database, this would be something you implement in your AJAX callback function - basically the JS function that gets executed after your write request (submitting the new post) to the database returns successful.
A whole other branch of options you could explore, is implement either of the following options to basically "listen" in for changes server-side, and have the re-rendering react as the callback you use:
Polling - basically issue a request every X number of seconds to check if there have been updates, or change of state on server-side.
WebSockets - checkout Socket.io. Through this you can "push" messages from the server-side to your clients. As a note, WebSockets are not universally supported in every browser and from past experience I've found WebSocket protocols even differ by browser versions. So if you need universal support, I'd go with a polling method.
Good luck on your project, hope this helps!