I wonder how to update fast numbers on a website.
I have a machine that generates a lot of output, and I need to show it on line. However my problem is the update frequency is high, and therefore I am not sure how to handle it.
It would be nice to show the last N numbers, say ten. The numbers are updated at 30Hz. That might be too much for the human eye, but the human eye is only for control here.
I wonder how to do this. A page reload would keep the browser continuously loading a page, and for a web page something more then just these numbers would need to be shown.
I might generate a raw web engine that writes the number to a page over a specific IP address and port number, but even then I wonder whether this page reloading would be too slow, giving a strange experience to the users.
How should I deal with such an extreme update rate of data on a website? Usually websites are not like that.
In the tags for this question I named the languages that I understand. In the end I will probably write in C#.
a) WebSockets in conjuction with ajax to update only parts of the site would work, disadvantage: the clients infrastructure (proxies) must support those (which is currently not the case 99% of time).
b) With existing infrastructure the approach is Long Polling. You make an XmlHttpRequest using javascript. In case no data is present, the request is blocked on server side for say 5 to 10 seconds. In case data is avaiable, you immediately answer the request. The client then immediately sends a new request. I managed to get >500 updates per second using java client connecting via proxy, http to a webserver (real time stock data displayed).
You need to bundle several updates with each request in order to get enough throughput.
Rapid number updates on a website