Real-time HTML5 web application without Node.js

Question

What would be the most appropriate way to make a real-time web app that works on PHP (Apache web server)?
The idea of web application is to let two users at the same time edit same HTML form which is regularly saved to MySQL DB.
I am thinking about AngularJS + Laravel approach with lots of AJAX requests, but maybe there is more appropriate way to do this (maybe WebSockets)?
There are no requirements for browser compatibility except that it would work on latest version of Chrome.

Answer 1

Basically, if you want a real-time web application your best bet would be WebSockets. It is event driven so the client doesn't has to pull for updates, the server push them. Otherwise, the client would have to constantly pull updates from a REST API.

A quick search on Google led me to Ratchet which is a PHP websockets.

Good luck!