We are planning to build a vast web application that provides real-time data update and display(sth like stockmarket). There is a need for efficient server-client bidirectional communication. After research html5 web-sockets seem a must. However there are several issues regarding compatibility and fallback as well as server support. We need a simple and stable solution in php preferable and apache integration. We made some tests with phpwebsockets and pywebsockets but they seem not so stable. What would you propose as a more stable - tested solution, sth like kaazing maybe but in php? Thank you in advance.
What you want to use is Socket.IO, which takes care of all the cross-browser issues and provides seamless fallbacks for the older browsers. Socket.IO was made to be used with Node.js, but can now be used with a number of different server-side languages.
However, I would NOT recommend using Web Sockets with PHP. Because PHP is not designed for long running bidirectional communication and will cause an entire Apache process/thread to lock up with each new connection.
I would highly recommend using a language like Node.js on the server-side, which can easily handle thousands of long running connections without any problems.