Two way communication with server side objects for web-application development

Question

Background

My background is high scale object oriented middleware and Applications development for embedded devices and desktops with C++. Now we need to create a high scale web-app for our startup.

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Question

Request-response based and continuous polling based current web-development frameworks looks very primitive, inefficient.

I am looking for completely server-side object oriented and event based programming. Here is an example it,

There is a persistent object named employeeManager on server,

methods of this object,

empList getAllEmployeeList();  
empList getEmployeeOfDepartment(string strDept);  
/*Some more */

events of this object

employeeAdded(empID);  
employeeEdited(empID);  
employeeRemoved(empID);  
/*Some more */

Now, client side javascript should be able to call the methods of this (server-side) object and should be able to receive events of this object. We can have results of the method call in asynchronous mode. Framework should also provide a way so that view ( or html-js page ) can register for required server side events.

Is there any frameworks which works on this methodology. Anything like this on top of socketIO? Any framework which provides a good two way RPC between client javascript and sever side objects?

Answer 1

Try the following combo:

Node + socket.io + Backbone.Model + a bit of imagination.

I think the missing piece is a model like structure that can be used on both server side and client side. The model needs to synchronize state between server and client.

Here is an article that I find very interesting, and maybe you can use the technique described?

The article:

http://blog.andyet.com/2011/feb/15/re-using-backbonejs-models-on-the-server-with-node/

Answer 2

NodeJS and sockets.io. These can help achieve the desired effect.