ClockingIT on Comet on Rails

Over the weekend I’ve installed the Juggernaut plugin for Rails which provides Comet like functionality via a tiny flash applet and a push server written in Ruby. Due to it’s relative recent announcement and release, I had to fix a couple of problems as well as fiddle around quite a bit. But, overall, it works quite well once you get it all set up and integrated into your existing code.

One tiny problem is that Flash 7 under linux doesn’t trigger the onDisconnect event which should inform users that the push server has gone away and let them reconnect. Not the biggest of problems, but I wish Linux would get the same QA that Windows gets.

What this new system means for users of ClockingIT is that when someone in your company either adds, edits or completes a task or tasklist which is shown by your filter, you’ll autmatically and instantly see the change reflected on your own page. And vice versa.

This happens without server polling, which I’ve been using for the chat up until now, as there is an embedded flash applet on the pages with a constant connection to a specialized push server. When an event is triggered in the application, the push server is notified, and it sends the correct javascript to the correct clients to have the page updated. Quite fun to see in action – the web has come a long way since static HTML pages.

Advertisement