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+2 A:

It is possible. Just use response.write() multiple times.

var body = ["hello world", "early morning", "richard stallman", "chunky bacon"];
// send headers
response.writeHead(200, {
  "Content-Type": "text/plain"
});

// send data in chunks
for (piece in body) {
    response.write(body[piece], "ascii");
}

// close connection
response.close();

You may have to close and reopen connection every 30 seconds or so.

EDIT: this is the code I actually tested:

var sys = require('sys'),
http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
    var currentTime = new Date();
    sys.puts('Starting sending time');
    setInterval(function(){
        res.write(
            currentTime.getHours()
            + ':' +
            currentTime.getMinutes()
            + ':' +
            currentTime.getSeconds() + "\n"
        );

        setTimeout(function() {
            res.close();
        }, 10000);

    },1000);
}).listen(8090, '192.168.175.128');

I connected to it by Telnet and its indeed gives out chunked response. But to use it in AJAX browser has to support XHR.readyState = 3 (partial response). Not all browsers support this, as far as I know. So you better use long polling (or Websockets for Chrome/Firefox).

EDIT2: Also, if you use nginx as reverse proxy to Node, it sometimes wants to gather all chunks and send it to user at once. You need to tweak it.

Kuroki Kaze 2010-04-01 20:30:19

I am testing this approach, but I am having trouble accessing the node.js script trough Ajax on my page. I think this has something to do with some cross domain thing. I am going to work on this later on and see if this works as expected.

Saif Bechan 2010-04-02 03:16:56

I updated the question I hope you can help me with this.

Saif Bechan 2010-04-02 09:09:08

`jquery.load` waits for all body to arrive before firing callback. You need to use something different. See http://api.jquery.com/load/

Kuroki Kaze 2010-04-02 10:43:14

Do you have any idea on what kind of difference?

Saif Bechan 2010-04-02 10:51:52

Some low-level stuff, I think. `XMLHTTPRequest` maybe. Anything that can deal with chunked responses.

Kuroki Kaze 2010-04-02 11:46:29

Are you sure this should work. Or are you just thinking theoretically it should work. Because I am trying to get it chunked but its just not displaying. The Transfer-Encoding is chunked but Node.js only sends it when you call close. Else i should just use a long poll solution.

Saif Bechan 2010-04-02 13:47:09

I'll check it on my node machine (0.1.31)

Kuroki Kaze 2010-04-02 13:55:29

Yes, maybe longpoll will be better.

Kuroki Kaze 2010-04-02 13:55:48

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Stream data with Node.js

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