Question
Can you use thin
with ActionController::Live
to implement Server Side Events (SSE) and long polling? If so, how?
Context
Although the title is a repeat of How to get Rails 4 ActionController::Live streaming working with Thin and Ruby 2? And how do Thin and Puma scale with live streaming?, the OP muddied the waters by asking two questions, and this question never got answered.
A number of other posts suggest you CAN use thin
for Server Side Events (sse) if you start it via exec thin start --threaded
: Does Heroku support ActionController::Live? and Is puma the ONLY multi-threaded rails 4 http server?, Aaron's seminal http://tenderlovemaking.com/2012/07/30/is-it-live.html and Ryan's perennially dependable http://railscasts.com/episodes/401-actioncontroller-live?view=asciicast. But even though I'm copying the Railscast example, I haven't been able to get it to work with thin
.
What I've tried
# ----------------------------------------------------------------
# file: config/routes.rb
Rails.application.routes.draw do
resources :widgets do
collection do
get 'events' # SSE test
end
end
end
_
# ----------------------------------------------------------------
# file: config/environments/development.rb
Rails.application.configure do
... snip ...
# see http://tenderlovemaking.com/2012/07/30/is-it-live.html
config.preload_frameworks = true
config.allow_concurrency = true
end
_
# ----------------------------------------------------------------
# file: app/controllers/widgets_controller.rb
class WidgetsController < ApplicationController
include ActionController::Live
# GET /widgets/events
# see http://railscasts.com/episodes/401-actioncontroller-live?view=asciicast
def events
# SSE expects the `text/event-stream` content type
response.headers['Content-Type'] = 'text/event-stream'
3.times do |n|
response.stream.write "#{n}...\n\n"
sleep 2
end
ensure
response.stream.close
end
end
_
# ----------------------------------------------------------------
# Gemfile
source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'rails', '4.1.8'
gem 'pg'
... snip ...
gem 'thin'
Running it
In shell window A:
$ bundle install
Chalcedony[~/Projects/heroku-sample/widget-worker]$ thin start --threaded --trace
Using rack adapter
Thin web server (v1.6.3 codename Protein Powder)
Tracing ON
Maximum connections set to 1024
Listening on 0.0.0.0:3000, CTRL+C to stop
Then in shell window B:
$ curl --no-buffer localhost:3000/widgets/events
Back in shell window A I see the request and the responses being spit out at one second intervals (there's a one second delay between the 0...
and 1...
and 2...
). That's good:
GET /widgets/events HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: curl/7.37.1
Host: localhost:3000
Accept: */*
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
X-Request-Id: 95e64eb6-ee21-4e97-a33a-dbf579b3027c
X-Runtime: 0.066925
Connection: close
Server: thin
0... <delay...>
1... <delay...>
2... <delay...>
But in shell window B, the printout is delayed and appears all at once. The same thing happens when I view the page in Chrome. Have I failed to configure some settings properly?
P.S.:
$ rake about
About your application's environment
Ruby version 2.1.4-p265 (x86_64-darwin14.0)
RubyGems version 2.2.2
Rack version 1.5
Rails version 4.1.8
JavaScript Runtime JavaScriptCore
Active Record version 4.1.8
Action Pack version 4.1.8
Action View version 4.1.8
Action Mailer version 4.1.8
Active Support version 4.1.8
Middleware Rack::Sendfile, ActionDispatch::Static, #<ActiveSupport::Cache::Strategy::LocalCache::Middleware:0x007fb0cb4ae1a0>, Rack::Runtime, Rack::MethodOverride, ActionDispatch::RequestId, Rails::Rack::Logger, ActionDispatch::ShowExceptions, ActionDispatch::DebugExceptions, ActionDispatch::RemoteIp, ActionDispatch::Reloader, ActionDispatch::Callbacks, ActiveRecord::Migration::CheckPending, ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::ConnectionManagement, ActiveRecord::QueryCache, ActionDispatch::Cookies, ActionDispatch::Session::CookieStore, ActionDispatch::Flash, ActionDispatch::ParamsParser, Rack::Head, Rack::ConditionalGet, Rack::ETag
Environment development
Database adapter postgresql
Database schema version 20141213003938
P.P.S.
Right now you might be thinking "Why aren't you using puma
like everyone else?" Good question. Right now, I'm unable to build the puma gem on my machine for reasons I haven't figured out. And I've been using thin
in most of my heroku deployed apps, so I'm comfortable with it. If I can't get thin to work, I'll put more effort into building puma.
close
for streaming events. The effect you're describing is like it's not streaming at all, but instead waiting until all the data is through and then flushing. I don't have the answer, but maybe this will help. I eagerly await someone who has more experience with this! – Protectorate