Push data instantly to frontend when adding data to database (Ushahidi) - php

I would like to realtime update my map view when someone adds a post without refreshing the page in Ushahidi(opensource website project). Its backend uses php (Kohana framework) and MySQL database, and front-end uses AngularJS. There might be not built-in mechanism about this. So I want to find out which materials are suitable.
First, I need to use event driven lib, such as this, to detect database changes. Second, how to detect database changes. Third, use web socket based lib, such as Socket.io, to realtime push data to the front-end to display.
I have read echo feature in Laravel php framework which seems to fit this, but not in Kohana. Is there any better approach in this system or some good references? Thanks

Let's start with a simpler matter: sending notifications.
PHP is not suitable as a WebSocket server (though you can do this). It is better to write it in Node and notify it from PHP. WS server will continue to send notifications. You can also use a commercial service that will do it.
Detection of changes in the database: If the application has been correctly written (ie it uses ORM, not raw INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE/REPLACE queries) then it is enough to modify the save method using https://docs.koseven.ga/guide-api/ORM#changed data.
In case there are several raw queries you can handle them manually.
Otherwise, you can use triggers. Mark record as updated (eg: insert data to log/notification table). In the WebSocket server, you can periodically check this data and notify recipients.

Related

Can we use and manipulate mysql data with google spreadsheet vice versa in php?

I want to use google spreadsheet on my laravel website and i want to connect mysql data with this spreadsheet. and also i want to display spreadsheet in my website page and if user will update anything in spreadsheet then it will reflect in mysql and also if data will update in mysql table then also spreadsheet data will be change. So can you please suggest me is it possible or not? and if possible then explain me with best steps.
Thanks in advance!
Yes, you can.
By using the Google Sheets API to fetch data you can sync you SQL data with that with any programming language that supports HTTP calls, with an easier time to those where Google provides a client.
You could also use Apps Script to create a onEdit trigger that pushes the changed data to the MySQL table. This is by far the most elegant solution since you are not doing a full refresh every time, just grabbing the changes and pushing them over. Of course, this also requires you to have a receiving mechanism that is reachable by Apps Script, like a web-service.
Also, if you want to use data in tabular form (SQL) in your website, why not just do it all thru Google Sheets, without the SQL layer? You can use JavaScript to filter your data straight from the sheets. While it has some performance draw, it's most likely unnoticeable for the common user. And the performance difference should not appear unless you have a good SQL server setup.

Safely connecting to Cloudant using AngularJS (and possibly PHP)

I built a very simple AngularJS Shop App that creates product orders.
As of now, the app just sends orders via email to the customer and retailer using PHP, but I thought it might be good to learn a bit how to use databases, and store/retrieve this orders (which are arrays) into a Cloudant.
But then I realized that to connect to the Cloudant service, the call looks like this:
https://{username}:{password}#username.cloudant.com/DB
I assume this is not very safe at all, as the call and credentials would be visible for anyone.
Also, in the App there's no need at all for anyone to have an account or login, which would partially help with security.
As I have 0 experience with Node or any other backend system, I'm wondering: Is it possible to make secure calls to a Cloudant service using only AngularJS (or PHP to store the sensitive values)?
I've read a bit about the one db per user, but it doesn't seem to help in my case, where I need one single DB to store all my orders.
Any tips would be highly appreciated.
If you need to expose your credentials in your API calls, you better not do them from the front-end. If you're using Angular and PHP, the easiest way to hide your auth info from the public would be the following:
Create a PHP file and move your API code to the back-end.
This will be a bit of work, but in the end the service login should happen on the server. This file should receive requests from the client and transmit them to the remote service, then return its response to the client.
Use AJAX on the front-end to make calls to the above PHP file, and proceed displaying its response to the user like you would handle an API response.
This way your API credentials aren't exposed to anyone checking your page's HTML source and you can keep most of your front-end logic the way you have it set up already.
As #ppajer said, I strongly discourage to use AngularJS to do what you want to do. Leave it on the back-end and use ajax to make the calls. Take a look at this repo, it may help you: https://github.com/osipov/bluemix-cloudant-php-sample

Synchronise database commits in Laravel with AngularJS models/views

We have an web application built in PHP Laravel, which exposes a bunch of schema objects via JSON API calls. We want to tie changes in our schema to AngularJS in such a way that when the database updates, the AngularJS model (and subsequently the view) also updates, in real-time.
In terms of the database, it can be anything, such as mySQL, SQL Server, etc. There's a couple of ways we're thinking about this:
mySQL commits fire some sort of event at Laravel, which then fires a call to all relevant/listening models/views in AngularJS.
Before any data is changed (edited/added) - Laravel fires an event to AngularJS. In other words, after any successful DB commit, another "thing" is done to notify.
The second seems the obvious, clean way of doing this - since the database is not involved lower down the stack. Is there any better way of doing this?
This question is related:
How to implement automatic view update as soon as there is change in database in AngularJs?
but I don't quite understand the concept of a "room" in the answer.
What (if any) is the best way to efficiently tie database commits (pushing) to the AngularJS view (to render changes)? We want to avoid polling a JSON API for changes every second, of course.
I've also had a similar requirements on one of my projects. We solved it with using node.js and sockjs. Flow is like this:
There is a node.js + SockJS server to which all clients connect.
When db is updated, laravel issues a command to node.js via http (redis also a posibility)
Node.js broadcasts the event to all interested clients (this depends upon your business logic)
Either the client reloads the data required or if message is small enough it can be included in node.js broadcast.
Hope this helps. There is no clean way to do this without using other technologies (node.js / web socket / SSE etc). Much of it depends up on the configuration your clients will be using as well.

Web Chat in PHP + MySQL +JavaScript

I am looking to create a Web Chat system using PHP, MySQL and JavaScript.
Currently, I am storing messages in a MySQL database with an incremental ID (Yes, it is indexed), a timestamp, the sender, and the message itself. I am then using AJAX to query the database every 500ms, seeing if there are any more recent messages than the last one received. However, I have a feeling that this is probably horribly inefficient as it will result in a large load on the MySQL server when multiple users are online. Having looked around a bit on Google and on here, everything seems to point to this way of doing it.
My question: is there a better way to do this? Any tips on how to reduce the load on the server would also be welcome.
I'm using PHP 5.3, on an Apache webserver, so libraries or plugins compatible with those would be fine.
EDIT:
Forgot to mention in the original post, but I'm not worried about supporting IE or other outdated browsers.
Potentially viable basic approach:
Cache your 50 most recent messages in memcache. Reset this whenever a new entry is added to the database. When new users connect, serve them these 50 messages to populate their chatroom.
Use a third party service like http://www.pubnub.com/ to send messages to your clients. Whenever a new message is sent to your chatroom, send it out on pubnub. Your server code will do this after writing to your database successfully.
notes: I'm not affiliated with pubnub. You don't need to use 50 messages above either. You don't even have to give them any messages when they connect depending on how you want to set it up. The point is that you want to avoid your users reading from your database in this case - that model isn't likely to scale for this type of application.
Ideally, an evented environment would be ideal for this kind of app. The LAMP stack is not particularly well suited.
I would recommend using this library, Pubnub. Pubnub is an easy way to send radio signals via javascript, or any TCP language (such as PHP) - and javascript instantly recieves the sent messages.
In PHP, you could simply have it save to your database - then use Pubnub's PHP API's to send the message to everyone else on the page.
If your familiar with Html, Javascript, and PHP - it can be fairly easy to learn. I would recommend it.
You are asking about a web chat system specifically built in PHP, MySQL and HTML with JavaScript. There are many options including Pre-built solutions: http://www.cometchat.com/ and http://www.arrowchat.com/ which all have chat comet services powered by a cloud offering like http://www.pubnub.com/ with options to host it yourself. See more about CometServices http://www.cometchat.com/cometservice/third-party-alternatives where you compare the service providers. There are several more options, however I recommend starting there. If you needs something more simple, like HTML and JavaScript only solution, you can check out http://www.pubnub.com/blog/build-real-time-web-apps-easy which is a blog about building real-time web apps easy with an example chat app in 10 lines of JavaScript Code. The solution Cuts Development Time by providing full Cross Platform for all browsers and mobile devices.
You should look into ajax long polling, in a nutshell this a simple ajax call but will not return a result from the server if there is no new data. You just do a simple loop on the server side until new data will be available then return it. Of course you have to stop this eventually if there's no result to send to client after a while (eg. 1 minute) then restart the call.
I suppose, that chat is too intensive for storage engines MySQL. Maybe, MEMORY table type will be ok, never used it. I spoken to several developers and everybody agree, that best option for chat is Memcache or even writing your own custom daemon (with memory-only storage as weel).
For client part you may read about short-polling, long-poling and web-sockets / sockets via flash/Java object.
using AJAX to query the database every 500ms
Is short-polling.
Sockets are a better solution than AJAX polling, however isn't much around about how you can integrate socket based chats with MySQL.
I have done a few tests and have a basic example working here: https://github.com/andrefigueira/PHP-MySQL-Sockets-Chat
It makes use of Ratchet (http://socketo.me/) for the creation of the chat server in PHP.
And you can send chat messages to the DB by sending the server JSON with the information of who is chatting, (if of course you have user sessions)

Android remote MySQL operations using a web service with php

I read some nice articles about how to connect to a remote MySQL database via Android.
Found some really interesting links here and here.
So the common way for getting data seems to be using some kind of webservice (interface, in this case a php script) which queries the db and renders the result in JSON (or XML) format. Then its possible to parse this output with the android JSON_Object implementation. So far so good.
Receiving data from the database and showing it up in a android listview was done in about minutes.
But what is the best practice for writing (inserting) data into tables?
Should a webservice be used here too? (or rather direct mysql conn)
What is the best method to push data to a webservice? (for ex. to insert a new entity in a database) and which format should be used?
In this case I do not use any html forms or anything to post the parameters. So how to post these parameters to the php script? (from within the android app!)
Of course this operation should be secure as well. Implementing a data manipulation machanism is bit more risky (in order to keep the db persistant)
I think, that many apps use some kind of DB, to synchronize data (ex: highscores).
So there should be a best practise for that.
I would recommend keeping anything database-specific hidden behind a web service.
If you build a dependency on MySQL into your application and later find that you need to change databases, the entire installed base has to be cut over. Think about the logistics of accomplishing that for a few minutes and you'll start to realize it's a nightmare.
Premiumsoft's Navicat for MySQL comes with a HTTP tunnel (PHP script) you might be able to use. It basically provides a method for doing anything to a MySQL database over HTTP.
I'd just make sure there are no licensing issues if you plan to distribute your app.

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