SPA Conference session: The Real-time Web

One-line description:Hands on session using a simple streaming API to retrieve and display streaming data on a web page.
 
Session format: Long tutorial (330 mins) [read about the different session types]
 
Abstract:Streaming data is becoming increasingly important, but there is a perceived high learning curve and barrier to entry. We are creating a streaming service in the cloud to answer this need, and this will be its first beta appearance in public. We'll show that consuming and publishing your own real time data directly in a web page doesn't have to be difficult.

We'll start by briefly describing our experience in implementing highly dynamic, interactive applications in a web browser, particularly in the context of an html widget that displays the real-time Sample feed from twitter. After that, we'll provide the framework and opportunity for the participants to implement their own web applications that receive twitter messages as they come in.

Working in small teams from an object oriented JavaScript API that triggers a call on every twitter message from the Sample twitter feed, each group will create their own visualisation.

We'll then consider publishing data to the cloud service for other people to subscribe to.

To conclude, we'll show the created web applications, and run a small retrospective about the opportunities and challenges of comet development in general.
 
Audience background:To successfully create a twitter widget in the time, you'll need some experience of html and javascript. Some who don't already have such experience but are interested in the topic can be accommodated by pairing with someone more experienced.

Those wanting to use specific frameworks different to what we provide (e.g. JQuery or Ext) are welcome to, but we may not be able to support them as much, so they'll need a greater knowledge level beforehand.
 
Benefits of participating:A working real-time twitter application to take home.

Experience in and a deeper insight into comet application development.

 
Materials provided:A server providing realtime twitter data (must be network accessibe to the participants and able to access the internet).

A javascript API and example web page that receives the data provided in an eclipse environment on a usb stick.
 
Process:Start with a brief description of our implementation. Team/pair working to create something using our provided framework. Discussion of the experience of development.
 
Detailed timetable:00:00 – 00:10 Present why we think realtime data is important to the web.
00:10 – 00:30 Describe our framework, and help people get set up.
00:30 – 02:10 Work on the twitter widget in pairs
02:10 – 02:30 Quick retrospective and results presentation.
 
Outputs:A working AJAX real-time twitter widget. Followed by a real time chat application.
 
History:Not presented before.
 
Presenters
1. Adam Iley
Caplin
2. Phil Leggetter
Kwwika
3.