Imagine your Drupal site delivering live updates, pushing real-time notifications, or powering a chat system without the need to refresh the page. And more importantly, without depending on Firebase, Pusher, or any commercial messaging service.

In this session, you will learn how to bring real-time interactivity to Drupal using a secure, self-hosted notification server built with Node.js, Redis, and WebSockets. The system is inspired by the messaging principles of ZeroMQ (simple, fast, decoupled), and designed for full developer control over performance, scalability, and data privacy.

Prerequisite
Attendees should have:

- A basic understanding of Drupal and how to configure or write custom modules

- Familiarity with PHP and JavaScript

- Some exposure to web communication concepts like HTTP and WebSocket

- Prior experience with Redis or Node.js is helpful but not required

Outline
1. Why Real-Time Matters in Drupal

- Limitations of polling
- Examples of real-time use cases such as notifications, dashboards, and collaborative tools

2. System Architecture Overview

- Breakdown of the notification server components
- How Redis, WebSocket, and HTTP APIs work together
- ZeroMQ-inspired design principles

3. Security Model

- Separation of internal and external communication
- Drupal communicates with the server over a private HTTP API
- WebSocket server is public but controlled with client ID validation and access rules

4. Drupal Integration

- Overview of the notification_server module
- How to configure and use the module
- Publishing structured messages from Drupal services

5. Frontend Implementation

- Connecting to the WebSocket from the browser
- Subscribing to channels and listening for real-time events
- Displaying messages in live components

6. Live Demonstration

- End-to-end flow: from Drupal to client
- HTTP and WebSocket demo interfaces
- Multiple clients listening on different channels

7. Deployment and Scaling Tips

- Redis setup and persistence options
- Securing the server in production
- Scaling WebSocket connections and handling failover

Learning Objectives
Attendees will be able to:

- Understand how to build a self-hosted real-time notification system for Drupal

- Set up secure communication between Drupal and a notification server

- Use the notification_server module to publish notifications from Drupal

- Connect client applications to receive real-time updates using WebSockets

- Apply best practices for deploying and scaling a real-time architecture in a production environment

Experience level
Intermediate