Is using ajax calls on a loop the best way to track users on a site? I'm curious because when I look at pages using google analytics I don't see any repeating requests in the network console. Does google mask the requests or use some other protocol?
I'm one of the creators of Real Time Users.
Only 1 AJAX call get sent to 'track' you on the site for each page load. The AJAX calls you're seeing are asking the server for the latest number of users on the site so that we can update the value displayed.
This isnt the most efficient way of doing this, as if the site has a low number of users, the count will return the same number most of the time. A better way would be to use websockets, however i only have limited knowledge of using websockets so we decided it was best to just stick to the tech we knew (Especially as we built it in a weekend).
If people start using this more, we might update it to use websockets though.
Hope that answers your questions. Let me know if theres anything else you'd like to know.
My implementation is in-memory, and the nice thing about it is that if fit example my Node.js app restarts, all active users will get disconnected, and they will emit a connection event, allowing me to get the count of online users again.
I can extract relevant code and share it if it'd help.
I've come across Socket.io before, and played around with pusher as well. And if i remember correctly, Laravel has built in helpers for sending websocket messages.
My main issue is actually running the node.js application, as its something i've not done before. That was another reason for not using websockets. Wanted to remove as many barriers that might slow us down or stop us from launching, so we stuck with what we knew.
I'm sure i'll update this at some point to use websockets though, gotta learn how to deploy node.js sites at some point :D
I'd say ajax is probably the right way as far as polling for the data goes. Using web sockets for polling incredibly simple data doesn't seem necessary.
Having said all that, with the number of requests that we're getting at the moment, i dont think it makes much of a difference. Though im guessing if we got a lot more traffic, then websockets would probably reduce our server load.