Level: Introductory

Ted Neward

Director, Developer Relations

Smartsheet.com

One of the great problems of the Web is it's built on top of a client-initiated, request/response protocol (HTTP). In other words, the client drives the interaction—the client decides when to ping the server, and the server can only hang out and wait until the request comes in to tell the client of what the new state of the world looks like. What if the server has news the client doesn't? How do we resolve this? In the Web world, Web sockets provide a TCP/IP-like two-way form of communication, and Microsoft built a similar tool, SignalR, to accomplish the same. In this talk, we'll look at how they relate, how to use them, and more importantly what they don't do for you.

You will learn:

• How WebSockets and SignalR relate to HTTP
• How to apply them to a Web project
• Recognize when they're useful, and when they're better off left unused