What technologies were used to build the chat?

Question

I realize there is a similar, broader question here. But the answer is old and does not include the chat technology. Let me know (even if they completely rolled their own). Thanks!

I am most interested in how they implemented (削除) Comet (aka HTTP push) (削除ここまで) it in .NET.

• Steve: Did you ever find out the answer to this question? I would like to know which framework was used and how.
• Bill Paetzke: @Steve - they used .NET and jQuery, but not sure about the details.

Answer 1

But the answer is old and does not include the chat technology.

Actually it's more or less up-to-date, and does indeed include chat technology, because the chat is built on the same stack.

The chat is more or less a plain ol' ASP.NET MVC application. Obviously it's very JavaScript-heavy on the client-side, but the client-server communication is just simple XHRs (actually JHRs) that ask the server what happened.

I am most interested in how they implemented Comet (aka HTTP push) in .NET.

We didn't originally. We went with a simple polling model; see Why is the Stack Exchange chat room using simple polling instead of other Comet techniques?. We later added (optional) support for Websockets; see Does the chat system support sending data via WebSockets?. We're using a custom-written Websocket server that Marc wrote (SignalR did not yet exist back when this was added).

We're planning on putting up a blog post at some point to give an overview of some of the ideas and decisions that went into the chat.

If you have any specific questions feel free to ask them.

Some interesting questions that already exist and that offer some insight and discussions (in no particular order):

• Multiple chat tabs
• The hypenated part of my name gets dropped off in Chat but the hyphen remains
• What does chat offer that IRC does not?
• Chat Timeout - Feedback
• The nobodies of chat
• Getting Marc's chat notifications
• Chat clean up & owner rules
• Bug in chat: Ghost message

• tshepang: Was the blog post done? I can't remember.

Answer 2

I'm going to assume that jQuery was one of them.

On the server-side, I'm guessing the technology used is the same as the rest of the network. (ASP.net, SQL Server, etc.)

• Bill Paetzke: I guess I am most interested in how they implemented Comet (aka HTTP push) in .NET.
• NullUserException อ_อ: @Bill How do you know the chat uses Comet?
• badp: @Bill, the chat polls for events every two seconds.
• Peter Ajtai: Yes jQuery was used. Just look in the source.