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SignalR: Real-time Application Development - Second Edition
SignalR: Real-time Application Development - Second Edition

SignalR: Real-time Application Development - Second Edition: A fast-paced guide to develop, test, and deliver real-time communication in your .NET applications using SignalR

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Profile Icon Einar Ingerbrigsten
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£23.99 £26.99
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.7 (3 Ratings)
eBook Sep 2015 222 pages 1st Edition
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£23.99 £26.99
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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Einar Ingerbrigsten
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£23.99 £26.99
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.7 (3 Ratings)
eBook Sep 2015 222 pages 1st Edition
eBook
£23.99 £26.99
Paperback
£32.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at £16.99p/m
eBook
£23.99 £26.99
Paperback
£32.99
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Renews at £16.99p/m

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SignalR: Real-time Application Development - Second Edition

Chapter 2. Persistent Connections

For years in network programming, we have been using sockets and communicating with these. Although we now have sockets on the Web as well, we are not guaranteed that we will have it in all environments. We, therefore, need an abstraction that helps us out with this and picks the right transport mechanism for us. In comes persistent connections. This chapter will cover the basics of getting a client connected to the server and how the messaging works.

In this chapter, the following topics will be covered:

  • Getting started with single-page applications
  • Getting started with AngularJS
  • Setting up a web application with SignalR
  • Exposing a persistent connection on the server
  • Consuming the connection in a JavaScript client

At this stage, the developer should be having the beginning of a single-page web application connected to a server.

Persistent connections – what are they?

At the core of SignalR sits the abstraction that represents an actual connection. This is the lowest level of the abstraction and it is the thing that deals with connecting the client to the server and abstracting away the negotiation for protocol, and in general all communication. One could look at this as what is known as the socket connection in regular TCP/IP development. Although it is a bit easier, since you're not having to deal with byte buffers, but strings instead.

Where are we going?

The remainder of this book will try to keep to the narrow path of developing iteratively on the same application; a chat application with a web client, a .NET WPF client, and a Xamarin-based mobile client, all working with the same server. We will also go into how to self-host SignalR in your own app for any clients to connect to, without having to have a web server installed and configured.

Getting the project ready

Our project will have a server component to it; the server component will also be hosting the web client that we will be using.

  1. Start by creating a new project in Visual Studio:
    Getting the project ready
  2. Select the regular empty ASP.NET Web Application project template situated under Visual C# | Web. Give it a name: SignalRChat. Make sure Add Application Insights to Project is unchecked. Then, click on OK:
    Getting the project ready
  3. Select the Empty template and make sure Host in the cloud is left unchecked. Then, click on OK:
    Getting the project ready

Setting up the packages

Now, we will need some packages to get things started. This process is described in detail in Chapter 1, The Primer. Let's start off with adding SignalR, which is our primary framework that we will be working with to move on. We will be pulling this using NuGet, as described in Chapter 1, The Primer; right-click on References in Solution Explorer and select Manage NuGet Packages, and type Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR in the Search panel. Select this and click on Install...

Getting started with the server-side

We will need some C# code to initialize the server side of things.

SignalR is configured through something called Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN). There are other, more traditional ways of doing this, but this is the preferred way and also conceptually how things are evolving in the ASP.NET space. We will be using it throughout the book in different forms.

Tip

Its goal is to define a standard interface between .NET web servers and web applications. Read more at http://owin.org.

  1. Let's add a class called Startup to the project. Right-click on the project and select Add | Class. Give the file a name Startup.cs.
  2. Replace all the using statements with the following:
    using Microsoft.Owin;
    using Owin;
  3. Inside the Startup class, we will a Configuration method. Make the class look as follows:
    public class Startup
    {
        public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
        {
        }
    }
  4. As you can see, the class is not inheriting anything or implementing an interface. The signature...

Summary

We've seen how easy it is to get started with SignalR and set up a persistent connection. With AngularJS, we've also started seeing how to structure a single-page application. With the little effort put in this chapter, we are already sending a message for our chat application across browsers.

Moving forward from this point, we will be looking at this with a different abstraction, hubs in SignalR, providing a way to expose functionality on the server more naturally.

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Description

With technology trends, demands on software have changed with more and more skilled users. Over the past few years, with services such as Facebook, Twitter and push notifications on smartphones, users are now getting used to being up to date with everything that happens all the time. With SignalR, the applications stay connected and will generate notifications when something happens either from the system or by other users thus giving new opportunities to enter into this new, exciting world of real-time application development. This is a step-by-step guide that follows a practical approach helping you as a developer getting to get started with SignalR by learning its fundamentals. It will help you through building real-time applications using the new methods and functions in the SignalR framework. Starting from getting persistent connections with the server, you will learn the basics of connecting a client to the server and how the messaging works. This will be followed by setting up a hub on the server and consuming it from a JavaScript client. Next you will be taught how you can group connections together to send messages. We will then go on to know how you can have state in the client to handle specific operations like connecting or disconnecting. Then, moving on you will learn how to secure your SignalR connections using OWIN and scaling SignalR across multiple servers. Next you will learn building a client for WPF and building a client using Xamarin that targets Windows Phone, iPhone and Android. Lastly, you will learn how to monitor the traffic in SignalR using Fiddler, Charles and hosting SignalR using OWIN.

Who is this book for?

If you are a .Net developer with good understanding of the .Net platform then this is an ideal book for you to learn how to build real-time apps using the SignalR framework.

What you will learn

  • Explore the basic knowledge and understanding of SignalR
  • Get to know how to connect client to the server
  • Connecting a client with a server and setting a hub
  • Creating group connections together
  • Understand how to have state in the client to have specific operations
  • Securing SignalR connections
  • How to scale SignalR across multiple servers
  • Building a client for WPF
  • Building a client using Xamarin targeting Windows, iPhone and Android
  • Get to grips with monitoring the traffic in SignalR using Fiddler for Windows and Charles for OSX
  • Setting up code to host SignalR using OWIN

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Sep 29, 2015
Length: 222 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785288623
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Microsoft
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Product Details

Publication date : Sep 29, 2015
Length: 222 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785288623
Vendor :
Microsoft
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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
1. The Primer Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Persistent Connections Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Hubs Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Groups Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. State Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Security Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Scaling Out Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Building a WPF .NET Client Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Write Once, Deploy Many Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Monitoring Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Hosting a Server Using Self-hosted OWIN Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.7
(3 Ratings)
5 star 66.7%
4 star 0%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 33.3%
Charlie J. Biggs Dec 14, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I have the First Edition of this book as well. Straight and to the point. Have you mastering Signalr 2.x in no time. It has practical examples that I used to build my solution with. My customers are loving the Push Notification I am doing from my Self-Hosted OWIN Server. I have also started using it for my XAMARIN Projects. I would recommend this book for anyone architecting a Server-Side Push Notification.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
mario Dec 17, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I'm a programmer in the .Net world since the very first release of the framework. I also adopted asp.net for my real-world projects abandoning the old asp framework used to create the older web application. Since then all the framework has evolved at an incredibile speed. Also the world has changed with a lot of New technologies and challenges to cope. Signalr is one of the most promising technologies both in web and "traditional" applications. This book is well designed and balanced showing all the opportunities and the employments of this technology. It's very well written with a lot of useful examples. Absolutely a must have if you're involved interconnecting systems in real-time.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
S. Aki Feb 23, 2016
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
This book started off great and by the third chapter the wheels were completely coming off. The author takes you through a series of code blocks but fails to properly explain what they're for. You just never quite understand how everything is put together.Ended up giving up by chapter 5 and got this book instead: SignalR Real-time Application Cookbook
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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