SignalR – Real-time Application Development

Book excerpt: A fast-paced guide to develop, test, and deliver real-time communication in your .Net applications using SignalR About This Book Build and test real-time apps in .Net using the new features of SignalR Explore the fundamentals and the new methods and functions in the latest version of SignalR along with developing a complete application from scratch A progressive, hands-on guide to gain an understanding of the SignalR framework Who This Book Is 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 In Detail 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. Style and approach This is an example- oriented and comprehensive guide to learning the fundamentals of SignalR to build real-time applications. It will help you build real-time applications on the .Net platform in a step-by-step manner along with giving teaching techniques to deal with possible performance bottlenecks and other key topics.