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• Building a realtime chat app with Django and Fanout Cloud

  Aug 14, 2017 • posted by justin • filed under fanout, python, realtime

  Chat is one of the most popular uses of realtime data. In this article we’ll explain how to build a web chat app in Django, using Django EventStream and Fanout Cloud. The Django EventStream module makes it easy to push JSON events through Fanout Cloud to connected clients.

  

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• Reliable Server-Sent Events for Django

  Aug 3, 2017 • posted by justin • filed under api, fanout, grip, pushpin, python, realtime

  Today we’re pleased to introduce Django EventStream, a module that provides Server-Sent Events capability to your Django server application. It relies on Pushpin or Fanout Cloud to manage the client connections. Events can optionally be persisted to your database, for highly reliable delivery.

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• Pushpin and RethinkDB meetup video

  Oct 21, 2015 • posted by justin • filed under api, pushpin, python

  A few months ago I presented at the RethinkDB meetup on the topic of building realtime APIs. Fortunately the talk was recorded and the video is below. Enjoy!

• Building a realtime API with RethinkDB

  May 20, 2015 • posted by justin • filed under api, fanout, pushpin, python

  RethinkDB is a modern NoSQL database that makes it easy to build realtime web services. One of its standout features is called Changefeeds. Applications can query tables for ongoing changes, and RethinkDB will push any changes to applications as they happen. The Changefeeds feature is interesting for many reasons:

  • You don’t need a separate message queue to wake up workers that operate on new data.
  • Database writes made from anywhere will propagate out as changes. Use the RethinkDB dashboard to muck with data? Run a migration script? Listeners will hear about it.
  • Filtering/squashing of change events within RethinkDB. In many cases it may be easier to filter events using ReQL than using a message queue and filtering workers.

  This makes RethinkDB a compelling part of a realtime web service stack. In this article, we’ll describe how to use RethinkDB to implement a leaderboard API with realtime updates. Emphasis on API. Unlike other leaderboard examples you may have seen elsewhere, the focus here will be to create a clean API definition and use RethinkDB as part of the implementation. If you’re not sure what it means for an API to have realtime capabilities, check out this guide.

  We’ll use the following components to build the leaderboard API:

  • Database: RethinkDB, hosted on a Rackspace server.
  • Web service: Django, hosted by Heroku.
  • Realtime push to clients: Pushpin, hosted by Fanout Cloud.

  Since the server app targets Heroku, we’ll be using environment variables for configuration and foreman for local testing.

  Read on to see how it’s done. You can also look at the source.

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• Building a realtime API in Django

  Nov 6, 2014 • posted by justin • filed under api, grip, python, websockets

  Django is an awesome framework for building web services using the Python language. However, it is not well-suited for handling long-lived connections, which are needed for realtime data push. In this article we’ll explain how to pair Django with Fanout Cloud to reach realtime nirvana.

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