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On my site I'd like to do push notifications of comments like Stackoverflow does. Amazon SNS/SQS seems to provide a framework to do this but I'm having difficulty finding any code/explanation on the web for anything beyond a "hello world" equivalent.

From reading the AWS SNS/SQS documentation it looks like I need the following:

logic:

  1. post comment/answer to a new question
  2. create topic (for first comment/answer only)
  3. publish message
  4. subscribe to topic

PHP on the page where comments are posted (http://mysite.com/postCommentOrAnswer.php):

$comment=$_POST['comment']; //posted comment
require_once 'application/third_party/AWSSDKforPHP/sdk.class.php';
$sns = new AmazonSNS();

$response = $sns->create_topic('SO-like-question-12374940'); //create topic

$response = $sns->publish(
  'arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:9876543210:SO-like-question-12374940',
  $comment
);  //publish comment

$response = $sns->subscribe(
  'arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:9876543210:SO-like-question-12374940',
  'https ',
  'https://mysite.com/notificationsReceiver'
); // Subscribe to notifications

PHP on the page where notifications are received (http://mysite.com/notificationsReceiver.php):

no idea, thoughts?

Obviously, this is not close to being a complete demonstration and probably has some incorrect function calls but I was wondering if someone might be able to help build upon this?

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5
  • Are you wedded to SQS/SNS for this? I don't think I'd use them for it. Commented Jul 17, 2012 at 17:40
  • Hi @ceejayoz, no I'm not wedded to them for this. I happy to use something else. I just haven't found anything that is comprehensive, yet simply explained to relative PHP newcomers such as myself. I'm also using Codeigniter if you know of any PHP and/or Codeigniter solutions you have in mind. Commented Jul 17, 2012 at 17:59
  • For most sites, it's going to be perfectly OK to do this in the main database you're using for the site (MySQL, maybe). Commented Jul 17, 2012 at 19:26
  • @ceejayoz, thanks yes i'm using mysql. This sounds good but could you provide a few more details, perhaps in an answer to this question? My understanding is very minimal. Currently I'm using a setInterval() to query my database for new messages on a regular interval but would prefer to do a push system. I just don't know the logic of how to do that. Commented Jul 17, 2012 at 19:38
  • @ceejayoz do you have any suggestions/links for how to use PHP to do push notifications? The main thing I'm confused about is how to structure my the page that will receive the messages? Commented Jul 20, 2012 at 19:26

1 Answer 1

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3

Your comment implied that you are not wedded to SQS, so I am answering with a MySQL solution.

Unless you're dealing with so much traffic that messages would actually ever get queued, I'd recommend just a simple MySQL table approach.

I have a site with a MySQL notifications table that looks like this:

CREATE TABLE `notification` (
    `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `user_id` INT(11) NOT NULL,
    `notification_type` ENUM('inline','popup') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'inline',
    `html` TEXT NOT NULL,
    `entered_date` DATETIME NOT NULL,
    `display_date` DATETIME NOT NULL,
    `show_once` TINYINT(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
    `closable` TINYINT(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
    `destroy_on_close` TINYINT(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
    INDEX `user_id` (`user_id`)
)
COLLATE='utf8_general_ci'
ENGINE=MyISAM

This table is checked upon page load and the proper notification is displayed according to the notification data. Insertion is done as various actions or events occur on the website.

I'm at well over 10,000 users and so far this approach has not proven to be a bottleneck for the site. I don't expect it to anytime soon, either.

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12 Comments

-@Andy, thanks for this. The one thing I'm still confused about is how to make the notifications be updated after page loading, i.e., in a "push" fashion. Do you know how the "push" works programmatically?
The two most common options in PHP land would be long-polling (which Facebook uses quite a bit) or else interval checking as you proposed in your comment previously. Long polling is where a request is made to the server, but the server does not reply to the request until it has data to supply for the response (in this case a notification) or after a timeout threshold is reached and the poll is restarted. Good article here: blog.perplexedlabs.com/2009/05/04/…
-@Andy, thanks for the link. I think I'd prefer a push mechanism but I hadn't really ever understood how long polling worked. This link is making it start to make sense...
-@Andy, also i'm on an Apache server where people always talking about it not being able to support alot of open connections. So even though I haven't launched my site yet, I'd prefer to implement the "right" approach to this now rather than have to reconfigure later to a push approach because I chose not to spend the time to learn how to do it.
-@Andy, one last question, in the link you sent what's the point of usleep(25000);? I assume its just a delay to prevent some kind of havoc wreaking, loop-within-loop cycle, but just wanted to check.
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