cakephp3: how to implement facebook style or stack style user notifications using view cells?

Question

In Facebook, or StackOverflow, we notice that even when we DO NOT refresh the webpage, occasionally we get notified on the top navigation bar that certain events have happened.

Usually we term these as push notifications.

I have a working CakePHP 3 web app and the client requests for this kind of feature.

How do I implement this within CakePHP 3 framework?

There is this new thing called View Cells. Does that help?

I am opened to javascript solutions as well.

EDIT:

I can implement a json API if need be. I am proficient enough to do that. I am just not familiar with what to do in the front end.

Answer 1

You will have to use JavaScript in one way or another, view cells are unrelated in the sense that they are purely server side technology that assists in view rendering.

The StackExchange sites are using WebSockets for these notifications, Facebook used to use long polling AJAX requests if I remember correctly (not sure if they still do)...

There are various ways to implment something like that, the term you should be looking for is Comet

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/comet
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_%28programming%29