We all know that flex data services is good but is it really neccesary to implement push on flex page?? As a developer with very little money to spend on tools, I was looking out for alternatives.
And Alternative I did find!! The magic is called "XMLSocket"
Though the xmlsocket implementation is depicted as a way for the client and server to talk with xml , there is nothing potentially stopping us from sending just plain text ...
So this is how I did it..
1. Create a java based service that runs on a port (5976 in my case) that spits out content on the port when ever it is available. (This can easily be replaced by a JMS). This includes setting up a thread to write to the socket whenever data is available.
2.Open a xml socket to the server from the flash client.
3. create an ondata handler in the flex part that updates your interface .
There you have it.. :-)
I will be posting the code sample and explanation shortly .. watch out.
Happy flexing.
