Client to Client communication over PHP server for Android App

Question

What is the best way to connect an android application and a php server?

1. Using sockets (TCP request)
2. HTTP request

I am trying to implement a chat system between multiple clients, but I know that PHP does not allow multithreads for sockets.

I basically want to create an app simmilar to google latitude, and I also want to implement a chat system between the users. I have aldready decided that I am going to use a MySQl DB and therefore a PHP server so the client communicates with the DB (using JSON for data exchange). I found out that the easiest way to do this is using HTTP requests, but I don't know exactly how I should implement this.

I am quite new to this and I don't know how the architecture Client-Server-Client communication should look like. Could you give me some guidelines about how to do this? Or if there is any other easier way?

Answer 1

What is the best way to connect an android application and a php server?

1.Using sockets (TCP request)

2.HTTP request

it depends , if you use sokects (TCP request) it will be more secure and you will transfer a small amount of data to the server for each request so there is a small traffic , but it is harder to implement over http request , http request is not secure and will carry alot of data for each request ie(Http headers) so there is more traffic.

read about (push technologies) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology