push-style notifications similar to Facebook with Rails and jQuery

Question

I want to create a push notification system like Facebook. Whenever Facebook wants to tell you something (like that someone commented on a post, tagged you, etc), you\'ll se

Answer 1

Another way a lot of sites achieve features like this is bosh, or bidirectional streams over synchronous http:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOSH

Here is one of a few javascript libraries out there:

http://code.stanziq.com/strophe/

This type of setup requires an xmpp/bosh server on the backend, but basically the browser holds a connection open (extremely similar to comet) and as messages come in the browser processes them.

This technique can be used for notifications, chatting, and just about anything that you want to happen in realtime.