How to implement real time data for a web page

Question

(This is intended as a Q/A style question, intended to be a go-to resource for people that ask similar questions. A lot of people seem to stumble on the best way of doing this because they don't know all the options. Many of the answers will be ASP.NET specific, but AJAX and other techniques do have equivalents in other frameworks, such as socket.io and SignalR.)

I have a table of data that I have implemented in ASP.NET. I want to display changes to this underlying data on the page in real time or near real time. How do I go about it?

My Model:

public class BoardGame
    {
    public int Id { get; set;}
    public string Name { get; set;}
    public string Description { get; set;}
    public int Quantity { get; set;}
    public double Price { get; set;}

    public BoardGame() { }
    public BoardGame(int id, string name, string description, int quantity, double price)
        {
        Id=id;
        Name=name;
        Description=description;
        Quantity=quantity;
        Price=price;
        }
    }

In lieu of an actual database for this example, I'm just going to store the data in the Application variable. I'm going to seed it in my Application_Start function of my Global.asax.cs.

var SeedData = new List<BoardGame>(){
    new BoardGame(1, "Monopoly","Make your opponents go bankrupt!", 76, 15),
    new BoardGame(2, "Life", "Win at the game of life.", 55, 13),
    new BoardGame(3, "Candyland", "Make it through gumdrop forrest.", 97, 11)
    };
Application["BoardGameDatabase"] = SeedData;

If I were using Web Forms, I'd display the data with a repeater.

<h1>Board Games</h1>
        <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="BoardGameRepeater" ItemType="RealTimeDemo.Models.BoardGame">
            <HeaderTemplate>
                <table border="1">
                    <tr>
                        <th>Id</th>
                        <th>Name</th>
                        <th>Description</th>
                        <th>Quantity</th>
                        <th>Price</th>
                    </tr>
            </HeaderTemplate>
            <ItemTemplate>
                <tr>
                    <td><%#: Item.Id %></td>
                    <td><%#: Item.Name %></td>
                    <td><%#: Item.Description %></td>
                    <td><%#: Item.Quantity %></td>
                    <td><%#: Item.Price %></td>
                </tr>
            </ItemTemplate>
            <FooterTemplate></table></FooterTemplate>
        </asp:Repeater>

And load that data in the code behind:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    BoardGameRepeater.DataSource = Application["BoardGameDatabase"];
    BoardGameRepeater.DataBind();
    }

If this were MVC using Razor, it's just a simple foreach over the model:

@model IEnumerable<RealTimeDemo.Models.BoardGame>
<h1>Board Games</h1>
<table border="1">
    <tr>
        <th>
            @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Id)
        </th>
        <th>
            @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Name)
        </th>
        <th>
            @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Description)
        </th>
        <th>
            @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Quantity)
        </th>
        <th>
            @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Price)
        </th>
    </tr> 
@foreach (var item in Model) {
    <tr>
        <td>
            @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Id)
        </td>
        <td>
            @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Name)
        </td>
        <td>
            @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Description)
        </td>
        <td>
            @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Quantity)
        </td>
        <td>
            @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Price)
        </td>
    </tr>
} 
</table>

Let's use Web Forms to have a little page for adding data so we can then watch the data update in real time. I recommend you create two browser windows so you can see the form and table at the same time.

<h1>Create</h1>
<asp:Label runat="server" ID="Status_Lbl" /><br />
Id: <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="Id_Tb" /><br />
Name: <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="Name_Tb" /><br />
Description: <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="Description_Tb" /><br />
Quantity: <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="Quantity_Tb" /><br />
Price: <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="Price_Tb" /><br />
<asp:Button runat="server" ID="SubmitBtn" OnClick="SubmitBtn_Click" Text="Submit" />

And the code behind:

protected void SubmitBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    var game = new BoardGame();
    game.Id = Int32.Parse(Id_Tb.Text);
    game.Name = Name_Tb.Text;
    game.Description = Description_Tb.Text;
    game.Quantity = Int32.Parse(Quantity_Tb.Text);
    game.Price = Int32.Parse(Price_Tb.Text);
    var db = (List<BoardGame>)Application["BoardGameDatabase"];
    db.Add(game);
    Application["BoardGameDatabase"] = db;
    //only for SignalR
    /*var context = GlobalHost.ConnectionManager.GetHubContext<GameHub>();
    context.Clients.All.addGame(game); */           
    }

Answer 1

SignalR

This is the answer I'm most excited to share, because it represents a much cleaner implementation that is lightweight and works well in today's mobile (data constricted) environment.

There have been several methods over the years to provide "realtime" pushing of data from the server to the client (or the appearance of pushing data). Rapid Short Polling (similar to my AJAX based answers), Long Polling, Forever Frame, Server Sent Events, and WebSockets are different transport mechanisms used to achieve this. SignalR is an abstraction layer capable of selecting an appropriate transport mechanism based on the client and server's capabilities. The best part of using SignalR is that it's simple. You don't have to worry about the transport mechanism, and the programming model is easy to understand.

I'm going to define a SignalR hub, but just leave it empty.

public class GameHub : Hub
    {
    }

When I add data to the "database", I'm going to run the below bit of code. If you read the question, you'll see I commented it out in the "create" form. You'll want to uncomment that.

var context = GlobalHost.ConnectionManager.GetHubContext<GameHub>();
context.Clients.All.addGame(game);

Here's my page code:

<h1>SignalR</h1>
        <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="BoardGameRepeater" ItemType="RealTimeDemo.Models.BoardGame">
            <HeaderTemplate>
                <table border="1">
                    <thead>
                        <tr>
                            <th>Id</th>
                            <th>Name</th>
                            <th>Description</th>
                            <th>Quantity</th>
                            <th>Price</th>
                        </tr>
                    </thead>
                    <tbody id="BoardGameTblBody">
            </HeaderTemplate>
            <ItemTemplate>
                <tr>
                    <td><%#: Item.Id %></td>
                    <td><%#: Item.Name %></td>
                    <td><%#: Item.Description %></td>
                    <td><%#: Item.Quantity %></td>
                    <td><%#: Item.Price %></td>
                </tr>
            </ItemTemplate>
            <FooterTemplate></tbody></table></FooterTemplate>
        </asp:Repeater>
        <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script src="Scripts/jQuery-1.6.4.min.js"></script>
        <script src="Scripts/jquery.signalR-2.1.1.min.js"></script>
        <script src="signalr/hubs"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            var hub = $.connection.gameHub;
            hub.client.addGame = function (game) {
                $("#BoardGameTblBody").append("<tr><td>" + game.Id + "</td><td>" + game.Name + "</td><td>" + game.Description + "</td><td>" + game.Quantity + "</td><td>" + game.Price + "</td></tr>");
            };
            $.connection.hub.start();
        </script>

And the code behind:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
        BoardGameRepeater.DataSource = Application["BoardGameDatabase"];
        BoardGameRepeater.DataBind();
        }

Notice what's happening here. When the server calls context.Clients.All.addGame(game); it's executing the function that's been assigned to hub.client.addGame for every client that is connected to the GameHub. SignalR is taking care of wiring up the events for me, and automatically converting my game object on the server to the game object on the client. And best of all, there's no network traffic back and forth every few seconds, so it's incredibly lightweight.

Advantages:

• Very light on the network traffic
• Easy to develop, but still flexible
• Doesn't send viewstate with the request
• Doesn't poll the server continuously.

Note, you could add a function on the client for editedGame for pushing changed data out to the client easily (same for delete).