Programming Models

As mentioned earlier, WebSockets present a new development model for server- and client-side applications: the “real-time” Web. During every user connection under this model, your web application’s client side needs to communicate continuously with the corresponding real-time server. Although most server-side frameworks provide eventing mechanisms, few extend the events all the way through to the web browser to support this real-time model. As a result, you are faced with retrofitting your current solutions and architectures into this real-time model.

For example, suppose your server-side framework is capable of sending an event and you have observers of this event in your code. WebSockets gives you the ability to extend that event so that it carries all the way from the server side into the connected client’s browser. A good example would be to notify all WebSocket connections that a user has registered on your site.