I was making a live chat feature for a website I am operating and read that socket.io is not suggested for mobile applications because it holds a live TCP connection that drains the battery. They suggested firechat as a solution for mobile. My site is in NextJS and I plan on porting to React Native for the Apps. Is it possible to make it so my socket.io only runs when the user has the app open in order to save battery life? If not, are there any other suggested methods that are free?
Related
I want to have my application receive notifications without forcing the user to be logged in or authenticated. Thank you for your time!
Well, I'm using OneSignal to send notificaitions to the users of my Android app and it's working fine. Moreover, it uses FCM as its base. So, that shouldn't be a problem too. You can segment users thet way you want and send notifications to one or many - upto you. It's all for free and very easy to set up the basics of it. It's here: OneSignal
You can probably use Socket IO for your case to send messages from one device to another.
There are many good to have Socket IO frameworks which can consider for your requirement
Signal R in Android
SignalR is a new library used to add real-time web functionality to your applications. Signal R uses technology such as
web sockets
Event Source,
forever frame
long polling
Signal R is capable of selecting the best from those four technology depending on your internet connection and your application stability.
Signal R is used in application such as
Chatting application
Stock market application
Real-time gaming
Native Socket.IO
Socket.IO provides an event-oriented API that works across all networks, devices and browsers. Its incredibly robust (works even behind corporate proxies!) and highly performant, which is very suitable for multiplayer games or realtime communication.
Im making an app that multiple players can connect to, but im brainstorming the best approach.
Im going to be using electron for the interface and then be able to use other computers to log in to website to join the game with multiple players.
I will use sockets to connect to each player, but what i am trying to figure out is whats the best approach for the interface.
Should i use express with electron to somehow connect to the same website the players are on?
Is it possible to make the electron app start up a server and have my website direct to the computer that is running the electron app?
Or my other option was to just continuously upload and download from a database, but I feel like that would not be very efficient.
You're on the right track. I would suggest using a WebSocket based server / client architecture.
The server application is continuously running and handles inter-player communication as well as providing a database. The database could be integrated in the server application as a starting point, and, depending on your needs concerning scalability, be extracted as a standalone service in the long run.
Client applications could then come in many forms (a website, a desktop application, a mobile app). Using electron is a great way to enable cross-platform desktop application development that is adaptable to any of these scenarios, possibly also enabling to extract the contained web application as either a hosted website or even mobile application (using, for example, react-native or nativescript).
Good luck!
I am wondering what would be the best way to transfering data from the server to the application.
I am comfortable with javascript so web app would be a good one for publishing websocket communication.
Sending a server data to the browser like safari is easy(web app).
But I am not sure I can send a received data from the browser to my application.
is anybody tried browser to application transfer?
if this is impposible, what do I need to publish websocket connection in ios native app or
hybrid app? I have almost zero knowledge about ios. can you guys suggest good tutorials
for ios and ios websocket?
Using WebSockets from Javascript it is easy to send data from the browser to the server:
ws.send(data).
WebSocket clients are also available in iOS. See this answer.
I want to create a playstation home style multiplayer game for iphone. How can I implement multiplayer in my project? Also, how can I give players a chance to chat? How can I let them create their own avatars to interact? I am a one man developer, with no access to servers. Maybe I can use iPhone game centre???
If you're looking for some kind of platform to build on, there is a product called SmartFoxServer:
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
I have not used it, but it claims to provide a client API for native Obj-C or Unity3D. It allows for chat features.
If you want to roll your own, I recommend getting started with NodeJS:
http://nodejs.org/
GameCenter does not provide any kind of backend for multiplayer networking, at least not in the way you are implying. If you intend to build a networked multiplayer game over the internet, you most likely need some kind of backend.
Slicehost is a good way of getting a server like NodeJS running quickly and cheaply:
http://www.slicehost.com/
Don't forget that GameKit in iOS allows multiple devices to find each other locally (via Bluetooth or local Wifi) and create sessions. This might be a good starting point for your game. Here's some info on GameKit:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html
I think this would usually be done with webservice interaction against a server. You may be able to develop a webservice and pay a small fee to have it hosted by a web provider, or to use your own machine as (an unreliable) server while proving the concept.
Or you could just use Nextpeer - http://www.nextpeer.com
It makes adding online tournaments to your game real simple.
You can look at Gamooga (http://www.gamooga.com/).
Its a realtime communication platform for multiplayer games so you dont need to worry about building and deploying your own multiplayer servers. You can upload your own server side scripts onto Gamooga's cluster which receive and process your clients' messages. You can use Gamooga's iOS API with in your app to send messages from the client side to your server side scripts. You can download the SDK and look at the demos to start off.
There is a free plan of Gamooga platform too that you can make use of to start with.
Disclosure: I am founder of Gamooga, replying only since its relevant to the question.
I'm fairly new to multiplayer games. I have made a few for my own fun, but nothing profound.
Anyway, I want to make a game that is very cross-platform. The clients would be connected with their facebook accounts on the devices I release the game for (most likely computers (via flash), iPhone, and android). I am a solo developer on a shoestring budget (actually more like no budget). So, I want to make the game with a peer-to-peer connection. I would like to avoid using a client/server setup because of the cost to maintain a server. The problem I am running into is there is no way to connect peers over the internet, and the game is not meant to be played over a local wifi.
So, I have an idea. Can I use facebook's built in xmpp chat to send the game's multiplayer communication over the internet? I have head of xmpp being used for multiplayer games before. Does anyone have any other ideas? I understand that xmpp can be connected peer-to-peer, but can it be done over the internet somehow. I don't want the users to have to mess with router settings to play.
Thanks for your help!
The main problem in P2P systems are NATs and firewalls. Firewalls can be locally opened, NATs cannot in 99% of the cases. In the IPv6 world there will be no NATs, so P2P will be free for all.
Now you want to use Facebook's XMPP APIs for P2P multiplayer. Well... Facebook's XMPP is practically client/server because of the above reason. All Facebook's APIs do is to hide the transport layer to applications, meaning that you can send messages to "another user" while they actually transit through Facebook server. Skype is another example of P2P+server environment. If two users stand behind a NAT, it automatically uses a proxy server.
This is mostly the same with FB's XMPP, so you can go with that, unless your facebook users will see lots of strange messages in their chat window :)
I think you cannot build a multi-player game just by using facebook jabber servers. You will need to have a custom jabber component sitting at your own server to enforce your game business logic on the xmpp packets transferred between the game users.
This will (probably) involve writing custom Jabber Component Protocol XEP-0114 and Bosh Connection Manager component at your end. If you are looking to use PHP for developing your application you can have a look at Jaxl library (XMPP component and client library in PHP)