自动刷新消息传递系统？

Question

I have a IM messaging system in place, and does allow the sending of messages, however I'm wanting to update it like every 5 seconds or so that user can see the messages on both of their accounts.

So it would be like...

User1 > sends message to User2 > function is run every 5 seconds > User2 is able to see the message with out page refresh.

I was thinking it would be simple and that I would just run the functions as below:

window.setInterval(function(){
    load_primary_im();
    load_secondary_im();
    num_of_extra();
}, 5000);

This worked to a certain extent.

However I did not account that this clears the textarea which the user is typing in. I was just wondering if there is anyway around this issue?

Answer 1

I agree with the architecture comments, what you are trying to achieve sounds perfect for a node.js app, similar to this real time voting system:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-nodejs-polling-app/

Answer 2

Thank for the advice however after doing a bit more messing around I have managed to do it using an array and the .load function of jquery.

function convo_refresh() {

var myArray = [21,20,19,18];   
for (i=0;i<myArray.length;i++) {
$('.convo' + myArray[i]).load('filenamehere.php .convo' + myArray[i]);   
}   
}
setInterval(convo_refresh, 5000);

All i need to do now is generate an array from the data base of conversations and I should be set.