WEB SOCKET PHP concept

Question

I want to keep a persist connection between my server and clients (android app) so I can push data from server to my clients. After some search I found that the best way to do is WEB SOCKET. But there is two scenarios in here:

first is, I need to sent some data (command) like broad cast to some of my clients (not all) and then listen for their reply. And second is, I need to sent a notify to some of clients.

It's like chat room that there is a general room that the messages can be seen by everybody in room and some private rooms that messages can be seen just by two users who participate in chat.

I saw some example code but I couldn't understand the different between those two scenarios in codes. I need also some information about ZeroMQ and does it worth to use ZeroMQ for the project or not?

Just some links of references would be appreciated.

EDIT

I saw in code that people define some infinite loop to check some event but my idea is to create a virtual client in server that can call by other function so I don't need to change anything in DB and then check for event in my loop. the event can call this virtual client that can sent my command in broad cast. is that a proper way to do that?

Answer 1

Use Ratchet for this, It is a PHP library providing developers with tools to create real time, bi-directional applications between clients and servers over WebSockets.

You can use it's subscribe/unsubscribe (Topics) feature, which will fulfill your needs to send push notification in general and to specific users. Create different topics for them.

eg One topic would be general for which every user will get registered on page load and one would be for specific users. You can create as many as topics you need.