antichef:

I've been experimenting with Websockets lately for a project. Perhaps that would be an approach you might like? I've not used them in Perl yet. $job is using C++/Java/JavaScript/Python, so all my Websocket experience so far is in C++/Java. I notice that there's a Net::WebSocket module available on cpan, so it shouldn't be too much trouble to get going.

I've found the server side of Websockets to be pretty simple, and though I've not written the JavaScript side, I *did* look at it while debugging some time back, and it looked pretty simple. (I don't recall which (if any) JavaScript module we used on the browser side.)

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

I've definitely gotten the furthest with Net::WebSocket::Server -- but every time I start the event loop to listen for ZMQ messages, the thread effectively blocks. If I put it in the "on" "ready" section of the websocket connection, it actually works, with events going out to the browser, but the server is unable to handle additional connections and I can't handle disconnect/clean up. It could be that I'm just missing something simple, but at this point I'm suspecting that I'm missing something bigger.

There's also "server sent events" (Mozilla docs, Implementation presented at NY.pm, HTTP::ServerEvent).

(I have not implemented this approach myself, but have been looking into it for a future project, since I learned of it from Corion, who authored the Perl interface linked above.)

will definitely check that out - thanks!