EDIT: The original question asked for a real-time solution. I am not sure this is necessary. It should be about as fast as sending a standard SMS text message.
I want to integrate group chat in my android / ios app. There is a similar question found here, but the answers are old and I would like to see if there are any new / better solutions.
I am currently using multiple AWS services in my app, and would like to keep my chat solution in the same ecosystem. However, if there is a solution outside of AWS that is much easier to implement with good results, I am open to the suggestion.
Based on my research I have come across a couple of possibilties:
This AWS blog lightly covers using ElastiCache for this purpose
This LinkedIn slideshow demonstrates the possibility of using AWS IoT
Requirements for my chat:
Would like to be able to support up to 500 people per chat group
Usable from the web via online portal that has the same general functionality as the mobile app
Needs to be scalable to handle thousands of groups
Needs to handle emojies (cross platform)
Needs to allow for file transfers. Images and GIFs at the very least.
Send push notifications to users who have elected to recieve them when they are not currently active in the group
Are either of my possiblities a good fit for my requirements? Which would be the easiest to implement? Are there other, easier solutions inside of AWS? Outside of AWS?
Take a look at https://github.com/tinode/chat
It's not a 100% what you want but close. There is a third-party DynamoDB adapter for it: https://github.com/riandyrn/chat
I am posting this answer to close the question. I ended up switching from AWS to Google Firebase in order to use the Real Time Database.
There is a chat example here that might help anyone that stumbles onto this question.
Related
I have installed CakePHP 3 using directions from this tutorial:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/php-cakephp-tutorial.html
It is working perfectly and actually installation was quite easy. There is PHP, CakePHP, MySQL working and also I noticed that the newest AWS SDK as whole is installed in vendor directory. So I am fully set to use also DynamoDB as my data source. You might ask why I should use DynamoDb since I am already using MySQL/MarianDB, this is because we have an application that is already in production and it is using DynamoDB. But we should be able to write admin application using CakePHP in top of DynamoDB. This is not technical decision but coming from business side.
I found good tutorial written by StarTutorial how to use DynamoDB as session handler in CakePHP 3:
https://www.startutorial.com/articles/view/using-amazon-dynamodb-as-session-handler-in-cakephp-3
Well, there is not long way to using DynamoDB for putting data, getting data and doing scans, isn't there? Do you have any simple example how to do it, how to write data to DynamoDB or do scan?
I have also read the article:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/GettingStarted.PHP.html
and this is working fine, no problem. But I would like to all the advantages of the CakePHP 3, templating, security and so on, thousands of hours time saved with well written code and very fast to start coding for example admin console :)
Thank you,
You could create a Lambda function (in case you want to go serverless) or any other microservice to abstract communication with your DynamoDB. This will definitely simplify your PHP code. You may call Lambda functions directly (via API Gateway), or post messages to SQS for better decoupling. I would recommend the use of SQS -- you'll need some kind of microservice anyway to consume messages and deal with your DynamoDB in a CQRS fashion. Hope it helps!
Thank you for your answer, I was looking for a example how to use the AWS SDK for DynamoDB without creating more complexity to this environment as it is. This way I would have to create yet another layer without using the SDK that already exists. Can you please give wokring example how AWS SDK is used from CakePHP 3 so that it can use DynamoDB as a data source for its applications without losing it´s own resources an capabilities (MVC, security etc).
Thank you,
After a hard debug and found bugs I was able to get it working with only using AWS SDK in CakePHP 3.
I´m researching AWS for a specific situation I need to solve. I have a customer that we provide a big CCTV solution. About 800 cameras. We are now trying to migrate part of this infraestructure to a cloud solution in AWS.
It is a big step replacing all in site storage they have to a cloud based solution.
I´ve been researching on the best solutions to take care of this and found that probably the best is to develop a solution that works with Amazon Storage Gateway.
The question is: does anyone know which is the most efficient way to deal with heavy video storage on AWS?. What is the recommended way to go?.
NOTE: Hope this question is not going to closed as too broad or opinion based. I know it is in the cutting edge of it.
IF you're looking for a very durable storage, the S3 is a very very good good option. It has 11 9's durability and then you can setup life cycle rules on it too.
Many companies including acloud guru host all their videos on S3. It has the ability to even be connected to 3rd party apps both inside AWS and outside.
Not to forget S3 has read after write consistency too. Also not only is it good for just storing but you can setup S3 efficiently for streaming videos too.
So the questions has more to do with what services should i be using to have the efficient performance.
Context and goal:
So what i trying to do exactly is use tag manager custom HTML so after each Universal Analytics tag (event or pageview) send to my own EC2 server a HTTP request with a similar payload to what is send to Google Analytics.
What i think, planned and researched so far:
At this moment i have two big options,
Use Kinesis AWS which seems like a great idea but the problem is that it only drops the information in one redshift table and i would like to have at least 4 o 5 so i can differentiate pageviews from events etc ... My solution to this would be to divide from the server side each request to a separated stream.
The other option is to use Spark + Kafka. (Here is a detail explanation)
I know at some point this means im making a parallel Google Analytics with everything that implies. I still need to decide what information (im refering to which parameters as for example the source and medium) i should send, how to format it correctly, and how to process it correctly.
Questions and debate points:
Which options is more efficient and easiest to set up?
Send this information directly from the server of the page/app or send it from the user side making it do requests as i explained before.
Does anyone did something like this in the past? Any personal recommendations?
You'd definitely benefit from Google Analytics custom task feature instead of custom HTML. More on this from Simo Ahava. Also, Google Big Query is quite a popular destination for streaming hit data since it allows many 'on the fly computations such as sessionalization and there are many ready-to-use cases for BQ.
I operate a number of content websites that have several million user sessions and need a reliable way to monitor some real-time metrics on particular pieces of content (key metrics being: pageviews/unique pageviews over time, unique users, referrers).
The use case here is for the stats to be visible to authors/staff on the site, as well as to act as source data for real-time content popularity algorithms.
We already use Google Analytics, but this does not update quickly enough (4-24 hours depending on traffic volume). Google Analytics does offer a real-time reporting API, but this is currently in closed beta (I have requested access several times, but no joy yet).
New Relic appears to offer a few analytics products, but they are quite expensive ($149/500k pageviews - we have several times this).
Other answers I found on StackOverflow suggest building your own, but this was 3-5 years ago. Any ideas?
Heard some good things about Woopra and they offer 1.2m page views for the same price as Relic.
https://www.woopra.com/pricing/
If that's too expensive then it's live loading your logs and using an elastic search service to read them to get he data you want but you will need access to your logs whilst they are being written to.
A service like Loggly might suit you which would enable you to "live tail" your logs (view whilst being written) but again there is a cost to that.
Failing that you could do something yourself or get someone on freelancer to knock something up for you enabling logs to be read and displayed in a format you recognise.
https://www.portent.com/blog/analytics/how-to-read-a-web-site-log-file.htm
If the metrics that you need to track are just limited to the ones that you have listed (Page Views, Unique Users, Referrers) you may think of collecting the logs of your web servers and using a log analyzer.
There are several free tools available on the Internet to get real-time statistics out of those logs.
Take a look at www.elastic.co, for example.
Hope this helps!
Google Analytics offers real time data viewing now, if that's what you want?
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1638635?hl=en
I believe their API is now released as we are now looking at incorporating this!
If you have access to web server logs then you can actually set up Elastic Search as a search engine and along with log parser as Logstash and Kibana as Front end tool for analyzing the data.
For more information: please go through the elastic search link.
Elasticsearch weblink
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I am willing to use synchronisation service for my application. But I want to choose the best one. I want to know which one is better among all these. My application will run on Android , IOS , Windows and Web.
I am going with Firebase because I tested it. It is giving me fast results and it is also allowing me to work offline. Is it better or I will go with Parse or AWS Cognito?
I Also have an option of Google Cloud. Does Google Cloud provides service like Firebase? And are realtime updates possible with Parse as like Firebase?
Codeek has a good point that this question is opinion based, so take my answer with a grain of salt.
I have experience with both Parse and Firebase, but not with Cognito.
In my experience, Parse is better when working with large relationship-based databases. (I.E. databases where multiple classes of objects are pointing to each other and interact.) In this system, it is easy to store a lot of data very succinctly, but working with this data is done via snapshots. This means that you can take a snapshot of the data, edit it, and then refresh the server with the updated snapshot. This is perfect for things like my delivery application where only one user is updating the orders on our server at any one time.
Firebase implements a model-observer scheme, and so it is much better for applications that are highly interactive. For instance, I have used Firebase for creating a real-time game of hot potato. The advantage here is that changes to the data on the server are automatically pushed out to all devices that have registered as listeners (functionality not available on Parse from my experience). This keeps all users on the same page all the time. The downside is that the database is structured in a hierarchal manner and doesn't have defined "objects". Rather, it is structured via key/value pairs where parent keys cannot have an associated value. To illustrate this, a sample structure for storing a game on my database went something like this:
-Games
--1
---Users
----1 = "example#gmail.com"
----2 = "example2#gmail.com"
---PotatoHolder = 1
---TimeRemaining = 30
---Loser = -1
Cognito I am not familiar with, so I'll allow someone else to explain how that database system is designed.
In summary, codeek is correct that this is an opinion-based question, but for two of your options a good rule of thumb from my experience is that Parse is fantastic for large relationship databases in conjunction with single-user applications (i.e. single-player or turn based games). Firebase is more suited to hierarchal data systems in conjunction with real-time multiplayer applications.
I hope this helps! If you could post a little more about what kind of application you are trying to build then perhaps I, or someone else, could provide a little more guidance.
Expanded Answer: Although this question has been marked as off topic, to answer Nidhi's follow-up question if there is a way to use Parse as a model-observer scheme: Not easily. Using a timer is the simplest option. The other option is to use push notifications. This would require getting permission from you user. You can set the Cloud Code on Parse to automatically send push notifications all relevant users and then intercept them within your client so that they are "silent". In other words, when they arrive, you can have your client respond by updating your game without showing a ribbon or notification like normal push notifications. I have not done this myself, as I prefer using Firebase for that kind of application, but I believe that it is possible.
Source: PFQueryTableView Auto Refresh When New Data Updated or Refresh Every Minute Using Parse
Keith's answer is similar to Nidhi's reference to refreshing PFObjects via a Timer, Handsomeguy's comment refers to the possibility of "silent" push notifications.