simple web chat, multiple fronts

Question

hey, i'm looking for a solution to this problem:

i need to create simple almost realtime-like web chat for a website that has multiple fronts. web chat doesnt need any icons anything just nickname time and message.

website runs on .net.

users that want to chat must be logged into the system. auth for the users its allready handled. that aint a problem and the other ppl can only watch the conversations.

i was thinking, since its running on multiple fronts the DB should be used or WS that makes request to this WS every second and so. from here i dont know im lost... i was thinking that ajax should postback an id of lastmassage recieved to the web service and web service would send the user all the latest posts since the last recieved messages. this should be done once every second that it would look like its realtime chat and it would be a hell of a serverload.

what do you guys think ? and suggestions any ideas ? and working solutions ?

thnx rm

Answer 1

You can look at the XMPP protocol to perform such task. XEP-0124 Bidirectional-streams Over Synchronous HTTP (BOSH) defines how to create the illusion of a persitent TCP connection over HTTP which could be useful even if you go without XMPP.

On the software side, you can use ejabberd as the server and strophe has the Javascript client. All this might be a little bit overkilled for your need but it'll give you a good idea on how to perform such thing.