django-rt 0.3.1

A framework for implementing real-time APIs in Django web applications

Django-RT

Current version:

0.3.1 pre-alpha

Django-RT is a framework for implementing real-time APIs in Django web applications. This framework follows the traditional publish/subscribe methodology, using Redis as the pub/sub provider.

Django-RT consists of two major components:

• Application API: This provides the necessary functionality to allow you to easily add a real-time API to your Django application.

• “Courier” HTTP server: A lightweight, asynchronous server designed solely to deliver real-time messages to web clients.

---

WARNING: Django-RT is currently in pre-alpha stages of development, and is not ready for public consumption. Expect major API changes and, potentially, security risks in pre-alpha releases. Use in production at your own risk!

---

Uses

• Web chat

• User notifications

• Real-time charts (server monitoring, stock tickers, etc)

Features

• Simple to integrate with any existing Django project

• Trivial client-side JavaScript implementation with SSE (Server-Sent Events); no third-party libraries needed with modern browsers.

• Asynchronous server design to handle many long-running client connections from a single thread

• Decoupled server architecture allows for the use of blocking code (database access, cache access, etc) in callbacks, without compromising the operation of the delivery server

• Deployable on existing Heroku apps, using uWSGI

Requirements

• Django >= 1.7

• Python >= 3.4 (2.7+ support planned)

• A Redis server (TODO: minimum Redis version)

Deployment

Courier server

There are currently 2 production servers to choose from:

• aiohttp/asyncio (recommended): Python >= 3.4

• gevent WSGI: Python >= 3.4

Protocols

SSE (Server-Sent Events) is the only delivery protocol currently supported.

Limitations

• Only one-way delivery is currently supported (server to client). Messages originating from the client should use a conventional AJAX request. This should be sufficient for the majority of applications.

• Real-time functionality can only be added to Django Class-Based Views (CBVs). Older function-style views are not supported.

How it works

TODO