I'm developing a messaging system in Delphi. I'm using idTcpServer in my Server Application and idTcpClient in my client application. the client application pings the server every 10 seconds to see if the connection is active and tell the server to set the status of the user to Online. and also the user may send messages to his contacts. all these requests are followed by a response from server which i get by socket.readln command right after i send the request. for example for pinging the server:
TcpClient.socket.writeln('i am online');
if TcpClient.socket.readln = 'ok' then
begin
{commands}
end;
I also check for new messages using Long Polling. I send 'check for new messages ' + timestamp from tcpClient and then on the server, I check the database for new messages newer than the timestamp i recieved in a While loop so when there is a new message the loop breaks and notification is sent to the client.
But this system doesn't work for me. Sometimes I get the responses intended to be for checking for new messages when the client application is pinging the server.
I have developed the same system in php without a problem. but here there must be a problem.
I think it is not asynchronous. what should I do?
Regarding the check for new messages request, the server should not be looping waiting for new messages to arrive. Either there are new messages available at the time of the request or there are not. Get the request, do the query, report the result, and move on. The client can send a new check for new messages request periodically. Alternatively, have the client tell the server one time that it wants new messages, and then the server can actively push new messages to the client in real-time as they arrive on the server, instead of polling for them (similar to IMAP's IDLE command).
I would suggest you redesign your communication protocol to run asynchronously. Most modern IM services are asynchronous. When the client sends a request, do not expect a reply right away. Just let the client move on to other things. Have it run a separate timer/thread that reads all inbound data. When a reply does arrive, the client can act on it. If needed, include an identifier in the request that gets echoed in the reply so the client can keep track of the requests it sends. This also allows the server to use asynchronous processing on its end, so if a request takes a long time to run, the server can push it off to another thread/process and continue processing other requests in the meantime. Send the final reply when it is ready.
Related
This is linked to question: Suave stops responding with "Socket failed to accept a client" error
When I first started to use Suave, I was taking commands from a 3rd party service pushing messages and I would have an out of socket situation.
There is now more understanding of the problem:
I am receiving messages that are posted to the SNS service on AWS (it's just a queue). SNS will forward me each message it receives through a HTTP connection, as a POST message.
If I reply with Ok, I will run out of sockets. So this means that Suave is trying to keep the connection open and AWS is somehow initiating a new connection every time.
If I reply with CLOSE, the AWS' delivery starts to become odd and messages get delivered in batches followed by periods of nothing.
Since AWS will not change their system for me, I'm wondering if I can reply Ok but then somehow close the connection in Suave to not run out of sockets. Is it possible?
Or, is there a better way to handle this?
I think I described almost everything I need in title. So there is some WMB flows. And one wait for the answer in queue. I need to throw exception if there will be no message in queue after timeout.
Thank you for your time
Yes it is possibe, but you will need to develop it in your flows. MQ is made for asyncronous communication, so a timeout is not something which is native to it. I can think of 2 possible solutions now:
Use the TimeoutControl and TimeoutNotification nodes in your flows
In the flow which sends the request, after sending the request you add a TimeoutControl node and set up the desired timeout.
Create a new flow, which starts with the TimeoutNotification flow. In that flow you send your timeout error if the response has not yet been received.
And to know which response has been received you can use different methods, for example the flows sending the request and receiving the response could maintain a database table, or you could store this information in a queue as well.
Start waiting for the response after sending the request
Set up the response handler flow to start with an MQ Input followed by an MQ Get node. You listen for the response with the MQ Get, on which you can set a wait interval, that will be your timeout threshold. The MQ Input gets technical messages sent by the request sender flow after sending the request.
This is a worse solution then the first, as you will block a message flow thread while listening for the response.
Or you can just make 1 flow to send the request and receive the response, receiving the response with an MQ Get node.
This is even worse as you will need to turn off transactionality for the MQ Output sending the request.
I am facing an issue with the presence status, following the documentation and XMPPframework example code. I have written a chat application.
Problem : When the user 1 & 2 are online I get the status successfully and they can chat with each other. However when the user 2 goes physically offline via (Wifi OFF / 3G Off) User 1 is not getting the offline status from XMPP and hence what ever messages are sent from that instant of time are lost when the user 2 comes online.
It seems since the user 2 is not notified or stored as offline in XMPP and hence its not storing the offline messages to push back to user 2 when it comes online.
I have tried to resolve this by explicitly writing a [goOffline] call to XMPP, however the call is shown in 'SEND log' for 'user 2' but not received in 'RECV log' in user 1 from XMPP, due to which the message are lost in between.
Also tried with other sources replies.
Set status for presence available and send XMPP
priority changed with values non-negative
XMPPArchiving work but this is not what I wanted.
Server side Mod_zero push enables but get only first message push notification sometimes.
Setting limit on ejabberd.cfg file for users and offline message limit.
request for offline message pull.
Can anyone help me with this?
This is very typical situation where client losses network but server can't detect that it is offline.
To detect status of each client, server need to send PING packets to every client and wait for response.
If client responds then fine otherwise server will mark that client as offline and every other online client will be informed automatically.
Here is PING Module implementation for ejabberd XMPP Server (hope you are using ejabberd server):
mod_ping:
send_pings: true
ping_interval: 10
timeout_action: kill
ping_ack_timeout: 10
This has to be written in ejabberd.yml configuration file.
At client side also we need to enable ping module to respond to server pings as:
private var xmppPing: XMPPPing?
xmppPing = XMPPPing()
xmppPing!.activate(xmppStream!)
This code has to be written while we setupStream() for iOS.
For detailed info, please go through mod_ping documentations.
Sounds like your problem is at server level. The server thinks that the user is online so it sends the message but nobody gets it. This does not really have a simple solution.
1.
The best solution would be delivery receipts. Where basically when the message is sent to your client, your client returns a confirmation of delivery receipt. If the server does not get that receipt it would resend the message every n time. Depending on your XMPP server you might find a already made solution, of not you would have to roll out your own.
2.
A possible hack would be to have your server always store and deliver last 10 messages and then at client side you discard repeated... This also depends on your server implementation. XMPP MUC and PubSub have resources along these lines.
For a long term scalable solution, you'll need to deal with this both at server and client level.
i went through this question
Lost messages over XMPP on device disconnected
but there is no answer.
When a connection is lost due to some network issue then the server is not able to recognize it and keeps on sending messages to disconnected receiver which are permanently lost.
I have a workaround in which i ping the client from server and when the client gets disconnected server is able to recognize it after 10 sec and save further messages in queue preventing them from being lost.
my question is can 100% fail save message delivery be achieved by using some other way i know psi and many other xmpp client are doing it.
on ios side i am using xmppframework
One way is to employ the Advanced Message Processing (AMP) on your server; another one is to employ the Message Delivery Receipts on your clients.
The former one requires an AMP-enabled server implementation and the initiating client has to be able to tell the server what kind of delivery status reports it wants (it wants an error to be returned if the delivery is not possible). Note that this is not bullet-proof anyway as there is a window between the moment the target client losts its connectivity with the server and the moment the TCP stack on the server's machine detects this and tells the server about it: during this window, everything sent to the client is considered by the server to be sent okay because there's no concept of message boundaries in the TCP layer and hence if the server process managed to stuff a message stanza's XML into the system buffers of its TCP connection, it considers that stanza to be sent—there's no way for it to know which bits of its stream did not get to the receiver once the TCP stack says the connection is lost.
The latter one is bullet-proof as the clients rely on explicit notifications about message reception. This does increase chattiness though. In return, no server support for this feature is required—it's implemented solely in the clients.
go with XEP-0198 and enjoy...
http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html
For a XMPP client I'm working on, the following mechanism is used:
Add Reachability to the project, to detect quickly when the phone is having connectivity problems.
Use a modified version of XEP-0198, adding a confirmation sent by the server. So, the client sends a message, the server confirms with a receipt. Later on, the receiving user will also confirm with a receipt. For each message you send, you get two confirmations, one from the server, one from the client. This requires modifications on the server of course.
When the app is not connected to the XMPP server, messages are queued.
When the app is logged in again to the XMPP server, the app takes all messages which were not confirmed by the server and sends them again.
For this to work, you have to locally store the messages in the app with three possible states: "Not sent", "Confirmed by server", "Confirmed by user"
Hello everyone~
I have a problem to solve~
I have created a server that every one can connect to this server.
The function of The server is in order to transfer message from one client to another client.
I don't known when the other client send the message to the client.
I use Delphi-7 to develop the program.
I didn't find any TCPClient object to listen the message which the TCPServer send.
Please give me your point of views~thanks :)
Servers don't initiate conversations with clients. If your messaging clients don't already have open connections with the server, and the server needs to notify the client that it has a message, then the client program needs to have a server component so that it can listen for new connections from the message server.
One alternative is for the clients to keep persistent connections open with the server. When a message arrives, the server can send a notification to the appropriate client because it already has a connection open and the client is waiting for a response from the server.