Adaaam

Well I'm sort of working on an instant messaging thing where users can send messages to each other, not just one big chat room if you know what I mean, like Facebook where you can message different people. I mean I haven't written any code for it yet I was just thinking it out to get an idea of how I could do it. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to kill the server with Ajax requests Also I'll have to look into database caching.

Thanks for the help I know this may sound lazy because I don't know alot about node.js, but lets say I don't use long polling and just make an AJAX request every 2 minutes to get new messages for a user, would that have a big impact on the server? I know it's hard to tell because I don't have any details regarding the number of clients or anything like that but what do you think? Thanks, Adam

Hi all, I need some guidance on how I can build an AJAX/PHP chat application, sort of like an instant messaging thing like the one on Facebook. It doesn't have to be anything fancy as long as it works. I have some ideas as to how I can build it but I've never tried to do anything like this before so I'm a bit lost. I'm confident I can build the entire PHP side of things up until I have to use AJAX, then I'm stuck. The main concern I have is the affect it will have on the server, lets say I have a Javascript timer to check for new messages sent at certain intervals, wouldn't that have a massive affect on the server? I can only think of using a timer to get new messages for each user, I can't come up with any other way to get it to work. I just don't want to kill the server with AJAX requests if that's even possible. So really my question is, would it be okay to use a timer to get new messages of each user at certain intervals, or is there another way of doing it? Hope this makes sense Thanks, Adam