How do I continually update my ReactJS client from my Ruby REST/CRUD API without polling?

Question

BACKGROUND

I'm building a simple ReactJS application as a proof of concept; with Flux architecture and all.

I have a Ruby and MongoDB data layer API built using Sinatra and Mongoid .

A front-end served statically using ReactJS , JSX , and Fluxxor .

I currently fetch the application state using a click handler which runs the following function:

function(callback){
  var the_url = (this.state.isSelected) ? '/disable' : '/enable' ;
  $.ajax({
    url: the_url,
    dataType: 'json',
    cache: false,
    success: function(data) {
      callback(data);
    }.bind(this),
    error: function(xhr, status, err) {
      console.error(the_url, status, err.toString());
    }.bind(this)
  });
}

It is a simple AJAX call. I understand I could achieve some sort of real-time by refactoring a little and having a piece of code similar to the one above running periodically; basically polling .

I've read and have been told that the "true react way" of doing things would be to have the back-end notifying the front-end when the state of the app changes and that the way to achieve this reliably would be using WebSockets .

BOTTOM-LINE

Taking into account the stack I have described, what libraries should I use for handling these sockets on either end of the application, and what would the simplest possible implementation look like?

Answer 1

Your solution is not dependent on you using React, you should use the same way of doing real-time updates as you would if you had used any front-end technique. The problem with WebSockets are mainly that the browser support have been a bit erratic, socket.io is a quite popular way to get around that.

Socket.io is mostly geared towards Node.js, but should be workable from any backend. Here is a write-up on using it with Rails.