What this book covers
Chapter 1, The Primer, explains that in order to get started with SignalR and real-time web applications, it is important to understand the motivation behind wanting to have such a technology and way of approaching application development.
Chapter 2, Persistent Connections, explains that at the core of SignalR sits something called PersistentConnection, and this is where everything starts. In this chapter, you will learn how to get started with it on the backend and consume it in the frontend.
Chapter 3, Hubs, enables us to move from persistent connections to one abstraction up: something called hubs. A hub provides a more natural abstraction for most scenarios. They are easier to write and easier to consume.
Chapter 4, Groups, explains that sometimes you want to filter messages so that you have better control over which client gets which messages. Grouping in SignalR is a way to accomplish this. You will learn how to deal with this on the server and the client.
Chapter 5, State, explains that in addition to sending messages between clients and servers that are very explicit, you sometimes need to have accompanying metadata or additional data that is cross-cutting. In this chapter, you will learn about states that can go back and forth with messages.
Chapter 6, Security, explains that just about any application needs to take security into consideration. In this chapter, you will learn techniques you can apply to your SignalR code to secure messages.
Chapter 7, Scaling Out, explains that building applications that scale on multiple servers can be a bit of a puzzle. This chapter will show you how to scale out and be able to deal with these, both in an on-premise environment and in Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud.
Chapter 8, Building a WPF .NET Client, explains that SignalR is not only for web applications. It can be utilized with great success in other client types as well. This chapter shows you how to build a desktop client for Windows using WPF and .NET.
Chapter 9, Write Once, Deploy Many, takes SignalR even further, beyond both the Web and desktop to the mobile space. In this chapter, you will learn how to take your SignalR knowledge and expand into areas like iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
Chapter 10, Monitoring, explains that debugging is a part of everyday life as a developer, and this, of course, applies to development with SignalR too. This chapter will show you how to monitor messages and look at possible performance bottlenecks.
Chapter 11, Hosting a Server Using Self-hosted OWIN, explains that open web interfaces for .NET are an abstraction enabling web frameworks to be agnostic about the underlying platform. In this chapter, we will look at how to self-host in a simple console application using OWIN.
