SignalR: real-time web development in .NET

[Jackolantern]

I was wondering why Microsoft was taking their time to make a move into real-time web development. Node.js Azure makes it look like they are content to piggy-back on node to achieve real-time communication, but now something is filling the void. I don't believe it was made by Microsoft, but from the looks of the ASP.NET website, even if it wasn't, it appears to have Microsoft's blessings and support.

Anyway, it is called SignalR, and its promises are much easier real-time web development in the .NET ecosystem (ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC). I have not dug much into it yet, but there is a video on the ASP.NET website discussing it. It obviously uses Web Sockets under the covers and it appears to be event-oriented instead of asynchronous. That could be a huge benefit for game developers, since it would offer you the best of both worlds: evented for when that works best, but you could also use traditional threads for things such as the game upkeep loop. I respect node, but sometimes the 100% async platform just seems like over-kill and sometimes you wish you could just fire up a thread. This can actually go the opposite way from what node intended by making the work-around harder than the threaded solution you were trying to avoid in certain circumstances.

If you are a .NET developer and are interested in real-time, maybe check SignalR out! It already seems to have a large following!

[Jackolantern]

Alright, I just figured I would add a bit I have found out. SignalR is currently acting as an external project to .NET, but it is actually going to be a full-on part of the .NET Framework. Here is Microsoft's page about it. After watching the video and reading some things, I am highly impressed. From a high-level, it works much in the way that node and Socket.io do, where it first tries Web Sockets, then Server Sent Events, then Forever Frames, then finally Long Polling, falling back as needed. It also auto-generates Javascript needed on the client, just like Socket.io and jWebSocket. From there it mostly functions along an RPC (Remote Procedure Call) fashion, like Socket.io. However, you get the full benefit of having a traditional OOP language that can run I/O traditionally or async and includes traditional multithreading. This gives you much more flexibility than node does with its prototype-based, 100% async Javascript environment.

I have to say I am excited about this one

[MonsterMMORPG]

i should check this seriously before start coding v3

[Jackolantern]

It looks really cool to me! I am not sure if it is 100% released yet, as it still seems to be an external namespace to .NET, but it appears to be fully-functional, and there are applications using it today in full production. I am sure it will eventually be merged into .NET, considering that most .NET components start as external namespaces (WPF, Silverlight, XNA, MVC, Linq, etc.) If you do dig into it, let me know what you think

[hallsofvallhalla]

Been looking in to this. Really neat stuff. Thanks for sharing.

[Jackolantern]

I found a free ebook for SignalR! It is about 80 pages long, but seems to be a great introduction to its usage. If you are wanting it, you can get it here

[hallsofvallhalla]

sweet thanks