I'm currently building a Chat just for fun. I've never done it before, and I did in in general to try out the EventSource API (Server-Sent Events) in JavaScript. I just heard of it about 3 days ago and I thought it was interesting and far easier than setting up a WebSocket.
I knew that long polling uses up a lot of resource. However, since I've never heard of an EventSource, how does it affect the server? Does it use up the same amount of resource?
I've noticed that in the Networks Tab of the Google Chrome Developers Tool, the EventSource does creates a request with a large content size (over time). Is it better have 1 request with a large content size?
My chat currently is running two EventSource's. One for the chat itself (running every 2500ms) and for the "is typing.." mechanism on the chat (running every 250ms).
After about a minute of being on the chat, the combined content size of the two requests is about 150kb. This will increase the more messages there are though.
I'm afraid that my host will suspend my account. This is what happened to a friend of mine who used polling or long polling (I forgot). I'm not sure if an EventSource uses as much resources as polling or long polling does though.
Main Question: How does an EventSource affect a server?
- How does it use resource?
- Is there anything better other than using a web socket?
- Is it better to have 1 request that will create a large content or having multiple requests carrying small amounts of data?