WebSockets and Drupal

WebSockets are quickly gaining steam on the web, particularly in the Node.js community, as realtime technologies continue to mature and the demands of live or near-live implementations increasingly call into question the viability of existing tools. Node.js is well-positioned for a transition to live and realtime web applications due to its asynchronous, non-blocking I/O capabilities, but where does that leave PHP? Will WebSockets ever be possible natively in PHP and Drupal?

Luckily, there are a few answers to the question of realtime Drupal, which require us to rethink some of the infrastructural underpinnings of Drupal itself. While other solutions such as server-sent events (SSE) are in their initial stages and as such unavailable, WebSockets are already widely leveraged. Apache, on which many Drupal sites depend, relies on a request-response pattern and isn't ideal for handling persistent connections.

This session will take a close look at the current landscape of WebSockets, where Drupal needs work in this realm, some possible solutions and inspiration from off the island, and possible ways forward. We'll talk asynchronous, non-blocking PHP; technologies such as ReactPHP and Icicle; some issues and concerns which we need to address; and particularly whether focusing on realtime in PHP outweighs the ease of using existing decoupled solutions with Node.js.