SignalR + Redis on local computer - asp.net-mvc

I've downloaded the last Signalr.Redis package (v0.1) and I've compiled the last Redis source code (2.4.26).
I tried to run Redis on my local pc (server and client work well) but when I start SignalR with Redis as a message broadcaster, it seems that signalr wants to start multiple connection to server (same server=localhost but multiple port number).
I know that Redis integration with SignalR is new and perphaps buggy, but is it possible to work with redis+signalr on local machine or is not a supported scenario?
Thanks.

SignalR will attempt to make a variety of connections to the server in order to keep an open connection. For most browsers it ends up long polling the server (which results in multiple requests regardless). What I ended up doing was using allowing SignalR to connect in a normal fashion to my MVC app and then call actions on my controllers which in turn communicated with Redis. This gives me the added benefit of being able to perform business logic in between. Not sure I answered your question, but I just wanted to share how its worked for me.

Related

Mutiple hubs connection over one signalR request

I am working on a MVC application using asp.net which contains 4 portion which need to be updated in real-time.
I started this with having different hub classes in signalR. But it turns out that signalR is making 4 different connection one for each portion to support this which is increasing the load over server and sometime it is not at all possible to have more than 2 connection.
Curious to know if there exist any way by which I can handle using only one connection.
In short,
One application -> 4 signalR portion need to be handle by 1 signalR connection.
One page can connect to multiple hubs without issue. It will be over one connection, so nothing to worry about. It's dead easy with the generated proxy (see http://www.asp.net/signalr/overview/guide-to-the-api/hubs-api-guide-javascript-client#genproxy).
You will get a different connectionId for each hub, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Communication between Rails processes

Consider the tic-tac-toe game built with Nginx as a reverse proxy and having multiple Rails backends. Each client sets up a websocket connection with some Rails backends. If two clients playing a game are each connected to a different Rails backend, then a move sent to one backend needs to be routed to the other backend so it can be pushed on the other websocket as shown in the picture below.
In Rails what is the idiomatic way to communicate between two Rails backends?
In this situation you should setup separate WebSocket server and connect both users and Rails servers to it. This way you will be able to handle all users from one server without worrying about sharding.
In case of high traffic you could also setup several WebSocket servers and implement some kind of queue or message bus between them that will propagate new messages - for example master server that will only handle propagating messages and slave servers that will be connected to it and sent all messages received from users to it. Please note that in such configuration master server should not handle connection from users and server only for propagation of messages between slaves.
Finaly, answering your last question directly, there is usually no need to contact between Rails servers directly - as opposite to WebSocket servers they serve on request-response basis so exchanging informations via database is enough in most cases. If you really need immediate change then solutions like AMQP should help.

SignalR on non-Azure Web Farm

I have implemented SignalR support for web application. It works great. The problem I'm dealing now is make it work in non-Azure web farm environment. SignalR supports Windows Azure Service Bus and Redis out of the box. Also there is RabbitMQ implementation on GitHub. All these solutions implement IMessageBus interface.
Based on our current situation we can't use Redis or RabbitMQ. So I have few questions:
1) Is there any alternative solution that uses SQL Server or MSMQ?
2) Is it difficult (possible) to implement your own solution for SQL Server or MSMQ? David's post on SignalR 0.5 (http://weblogs.asp.net/davidfowler/archive/2012/05/02/signalr-0-5.aspx) says they are going to support SQL Server QNS or Service Broker (not SQL Server DB itself) so maybe it's a wrong way at all?
3) Is there a way to work around until this support is implemented? For example, it sounds like the we need to handle state of the connections list between servers. If we know number of nodes and their IPs we can share this information between servers via Web Service calls instead. Does it make any sense?
Damian Edwards appears to have just started working on the SQL scaleout implementation. You can find the details of that implementation here on GitHub and the issue tracking this work can be followed here.

Communicating between Node.Js and ASP.NET MVC Application

I have an existing complex website built using ASP.NET MVC, including a database backend, data layer, as well as the Web UI layer. Rebuilding this website in another language is not a feasible option.
There are some UI elements on some views (client side) which would benefit from live interactivity, involving both push and pull, so rather than implement some kind of custom long polling or websocket server in asp.net, I am looking to leverage node.js for Windows, and Socket.io.
My problem is that I need two way communication between both applications. Each user should only be able to receive data once they are authorised on the ASP.NET website, so I first need communication for this. Secondly, once certain events occur on the ASP.NET website I want to immediately push this data to the Node server, to be broadcast to specific users or groups of users. Thirdly, I would like any data sent to the node.js server to be pushed to the ASP.NET website for processing, as this is where all our business logic lies. The sole reason for adding Node.js is to have the possibility to push data directly to the client, I do not want to build any business logic into it (or as little as possible).
I would like to know what the fastest method of two-way push communication is between Node.Js and ASP.NET. The only good option I'm aware of so far is to create a special listener on a specific port on the node.js server and connect to that, but I was wondering if there's a more elegant or more efficient method? I also know that you could use a database inbetween but surely this would need to be polled and would be less efficient? Both servers will be running on the same server under a Visual Studio project.
Many thanks for any help you can provide.
I'm not an ASP.NET expert, but I think there are multiple ways you can achieve this:
1) As you said, you could make Node listen on a specific port for data and then react based on the data received (TCP)
2) You can make POST requests to Node.js (HTTP) and also send an auth-key in the process to be extra-secure. Like on 1) Node would react to the data you send.
3) Use something like Redis for pub-sub, send messages from ASP.NET (pub) and get them on the Node.js part (sub). This is even better if you want to scale your app across multiple machines etc.
The only good option I'm aware of so far is to create a special
listener on a specific port on the node.js server and connect to that,
but I was wondering if there's a more elegant or more efficient
method?
You can try to look at redis pub/sub model where ASP.NET MVC application and node.js would communicate through separate channels in order to achieve full-duplex communication. Or you can also try to use CouchDB change nofitications.
I also know that you could use a database inbetween but surely this
would need to be polled and would be less efficient?
Former techniques do not require you to poll for changes, but instead they will notify you when the changes happens or channel message arrives.

Running a queue-based background process on an externally hosted website

I have an ASP.NET MVC web application which is hosted by an external provider, on IIS 7.
I wish to run a process every 15 minutes or so, which checks a backlog of emails that need to be sent, and actually sends them.
It seems that the normal way to do this is with Microsoft Message Queue, but since this is a hosted environment which I can't directly control, I won't be able to install or configure MSMQ.
So far I've decided to do it by appending rows to a table in my SQL Server database (same hosting).
So how should I implement the bit where I check the backlog and send the emails?
Should it be some kind of separate thread in my main web application, which restarts itself every 15 minutes?
Another option I considered was just opening an HTTP-POST interface which, when called with an appropriate admin password, runs an iteration of the email sender.
I could then create a small console app on my local PC which calls the interface every 15 minutes.
The first option is simpler, but the second might be more robust.
Any ideas?
I would recommend you taking a look at Quartz.NET. Also an important thing you should be aware is that the web server could unload the ASP.NET application from memory if it is not used meaning that all threads that have been spawned would simply die. That's one of the reasons why such tasks shouldn't be performed in ASP.NET applications but rather offloaded in Windows Services.
Jeff Atwood did a post on how he originally achieved the badge system on Stack Overflow using an expiring cache to reset the process periodically.
https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/easy-background-tasks-in-aspnet/
I have done something similar to this in the past sending emails out every day. The service was non essential, and it didn't matter if the emails missed a day or two, as they would go out eventually anyway, but the system worked quite well. It's all asp.net so works fine in the hosting environments I use, without access to service on the server or creating a local trigger from your desktop.

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