Bridge - building cross-language realtime apps

[Darshan Shankar]

Hey folks!

Creator of NowJS here. We released an updated website of Bridge today that more clearly explains what Bridge can do. Some of the features of Bridge include cross-language RPC - think NowJS between many languages and servers (Java, Python, Ruby, Node.js, iOS, Android, browsers etc.). Ian Serlin (NowJS guru in this group) also built an ActionScript client!

Please let me know what you guys think! it's at https://www.getbridge.com

Also, we're on Hacker News near the top. Upvotes appreciated ;-)

Darshan

--
Darshan Shankar

@dshankar - @getbridge

getbridge.com

[Filipe Deschamps]

Seems amazing!

Congratulations guys!

Filipe Deschamps

On 26 jun, 22:00, Darshan Shankar <d.n.shan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey folks!
>
> Creator of NowJS here. We released an updated website of Bridge today that
> more clearly explains what Bridge can do. Some of the features of Bridge
> include cross-language RPC - think NowJS between many languages and servers
> (Java, Python, Ruby, Node.js, iOS, Android, browsers etc.). Ian Serlin
> (NowJS guru in this group) also built an ActionScript client!
>

> Please let me know what you guys think! it's athttps://www.getbridge.com

> Also, we're on Hacker News near the top. Upvotes appreciated ;-)
> Darshan
>
> --
> Darshan Shankar
>

> @dshankar <http://twitter.com/dshankar> -
> @getbridge<http://twitter.com/getbridge>
> getbridge.com <http://www.getbridge.com/>

[Ian Serlin]

Just in case you were wondering, the AS3 Bridge client code currently lives here: https://github.com/ianserlin/bridge-as3

If anyone is interested in collaborating on wrapping it up (including adding binary support, fixing a few edge cases, setting up a test suite and turning it into a distributable swc/swf) ping me and I'll add you to the project.

Congratulations Darshan, Eric, Sri and everyone at Flotype!

Ian Serlin

i...@ianserlin.com
http://useful.io
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ianserlin
213-399-1688
@spiceninja

Owner Useful IO LLC

[Nate Morse]

Thanks Darshan,

Multi-programming-language aspect is cool.

My first impression of Bridge (as compared to NowJS) is the "pubsub" style of coding.

Let me ask: Is it functionally equivalent to "NowJS's Magic Pockets?"

[Ian Serlin]

Hey Nate,

It is not functionally equivalent because variable values are not automatically synced. You need to handle updates to shared data via callbacks.

Ian Serlin

i...@ianserlin.com
http://useful.io
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ianserlin
213-399-1688
@spiceninja

Owner Useful IO LLC

[Darshan Shankar]

Hey Nate,

To expand on Ian's point, 'pubsub' is just one part of Bridge. Pubsub can be achieved with channels (subscribe to messages sent to a channel). Services introduce a different concept of exposing data and functionality. Callbacks allow you to hook everything up asynchronously and have return calls on messages. That's the basics. More info on Bridge is in the docs and example code.

Regarding NowJS magic pockets. We consider Bridge to be the next iteration in our work, but Bridge is not strictly a NowJS 2.0. This means there isn't one-to-one feature parity between Bridge and NowJS, and the API is very different. You can achieve a lot of NowJS functionality (javascript-to-nodejs RPC calls) easily with Bridge, but some features will require you to build layers on top of Bridge. For example, variable syncing is not available in Bridge, but it is something you could build on top of Bridge.

Darshan

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Nate Morse <morse...@gmail.com> wrote:

[N. Morse]

Thanks Ian and Darshan for the explanations, That all makes sense,
By the way, Nobody will miss the variable/object syncing feature of
NowJS, at least I could not figure out how to use it effectively.
Without notification of when a variable is synchronized, it seems that
you would have to "poll" the memory for any difference "yuck." IMHO
NowJS could drop that feature, and still be a great lib.

Okay now that I have looked at Bridge a little more, I see that
everything is a client, that is, "all application programming is done
in a Bridge client", of course these "clients" might act like a
servers... So all the scaling concerns (that NowJS might run into)
can be centralized in the Bridge severs smarts, I imagine.

[my casual observation] Your Hello World example is just a little
convoluted (for a helloworld example), but I see how it is a simple
good "template for a service."
-- Thanks

--
Nate Morse
Programmer
SmartCatalog
217 Commercial Street, Suite 406
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