perl chatroom

keiusui has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I want to create a chatroom for my website that is written in Perl.

How do I write the code so that the chatroom only refreshes whenever someone types and submits something new to the room?

Currently, my chatroom refreshes every 15 seconds via a Javascript refresh, regardless of whether anything new is typed in the chatroom. Obviously this is a waste of server resources if someone walks away from their computer with the chatroom open.

Comment on perl chatroom

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Re: perl chatroom by AK108 (Friar) on Mar 21, 2006 at 02:13 UTC
It sounds like you want to have the browser listen for the server to talk. This usually involves writing your own server program, which isn't hard, but you need a dedicated server or something like that. Here's some links, though: http://wp.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/pushpull.html : Netscape's idea of pushing data to a client. http://cgiirc.sourceforge.net/ : CGI:IRC, an IRC gateway writen in Perl. http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/97/18/index2a.html : Old article on how to write a chat server in Perl. It's Telnet related, but it is easily adapted to HTTP pushing. I've done a smaller version of it. If you feel like using something existing, but not Perl-based, there's a webchat interface to Jabber servers: http://jabberstudio.org/projects/jwchat/project/view.php	[reply]
Re: perl chatroom by merlyn (Sage) on Mar 21, 2006 at 02:15 UTC
Sounds to me like you're looking for javascriptmonks, not perlmonks. At least, I don't see any Perl content in that question. Perl doesn't care how often it gets invoked... it just does the job. As for the Perl side, you might be able to leverage from my poor man's web chat. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re^2: perl chatroom by keiusui (Monk) on Mar 21, 2006 at 15:38 UTC
Thank you. This is the Perl script I am looking for.	[reply]
Re^2: perl chatroom by zer (Deacon) on Mar 21, 2006 at 05:37 UTC
all you need to do is make the form that posts to the script. this will make the page refresh. you can also set the meta refresh so it mimics the same thing your javascript does. i hope that points you in the right direction	[reply]
Re^3: perl chatroom by keiusui (Monk) on Mar 21, 2006 at 15:34 UTC
Right, the chat window only needs to refresh whenever someone types and submits something. However, the chat window needs to refresh not only in the submitter's window, but in all the viewers' windows as well. Basically, I have to get two different instances of the same Perl script to talk to each other. I know this is possible in php. There are numerous php chat clients in which scripts talk to each other, only refreshing the chat window when necessary. Is this possible in perl? Or is this a discovery in which php beats perl?	[reply]