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I am trying to design an application where users can make posts with Django on the backend. Right now I have to refresh the page with JavaScript every 20 or 30 seconds to check for new posts that might be available for that page. I was wondering if there are more effective ways to do this? Maybe with a JSON response? I am looking for a solution like Twitter, where they show how many new posts are available that are not on the page or even like on Facebook where they update the wall posts automatically.

Is there a particular technology should I be researching in order make the updates more efficient?

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    StackExchange pages don't refresh themselves automatically, but they do get notifications when they have new content available, so the user can choose to display it. Have a look at the JS involved and see if you can't pick up some ideas... :)
    – Mason Wheeler
    Commented Feb 5, 2013 at 19:11
  • I believe what you're looking for is ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-cometjava Comet or long polling technique.
    – toy
    Commented Feb 5, 2013 at 19:18
  • If you're using Python stream-hub.com
    – toy
    Commented Feb 5, 2013 at 19:18
  • @MasonWheeler Yes that's exactly what I am looking for. I would defiantly have a look into it. So is using js for this the right approach or is there a better and easier solution?
    – Jonathan
    Commented Feb 5, 2013 at 19:18
  • @toy looking into it now
    – Jonathan
    Commented Feb 5, 2013 at 19:20

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There are several methods for this:

  1. Web Sockets
  2. Long Polling (or the blanket term Comet)

For solutions, check out:

  1. django-socketio
  2. Not a django implementation, but a great resource for concepts: SignalR

I would recommend going the websockets route, then falling back to long polling. Here's a fairly scholarly article on long polling and best practices.

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  • Except "because it's an old browser which doesn't support it", are there other situations where web sockets aren't available (and so you need to have implemented the fallback)?
    – ChrisW
    Commented Apr 25, 2019 at 21:55
  • @ChrisW Yes, there are several reasons beyond browser support: if your application has a reverse proxy in front of it that doesn't support or isn't configured to handle the "upgrade" header (necessary to establish a websocket connection), if you're running your site/REST services in a FaaS scenario (AWS API Gateway now supports websockets, but other cloud providers like Azure don't support it)
    – Zachary Yates
    Commented Apr 26, 2019 at 2:51
  • Although, since it's now 2019 there's far less reason to do the extra work to fall back to long-polling.
    – Zachary Yates
    Commented Apr 26, 2019 at 2:52

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