Since your initial question was what the difference between the two techniques is, I will start with this:
AJAX polling
Using AJAX polling to update a page will mean, that you send a request in a defined interval to the server, which would look like this:
The client sends a request to the server and the server responses immediately.
A simple example (using jQuery) would look like this:
setInterval(function(){
$('#myCurrentMoney').load('getCurrentMoney.php');
}, 30000);
The problem with this is, that this will cause a lot of useless requests since there won't be always new things on every request.
AJAX long polling
Using AJAX long polling will mean, that the client sends a request to the server and the server waits for new data to be available before he responds. This would look like this:
The client sends a request and the server responds "irregularly". As soon as the server responds, the client will send a new request to the server.
The client side would look like this:
refresh = function() {
$('#myCurrentMoney').load('getCurrentMoney.php',function(){
refresh();
});
}
$(function(){
refresh();
});
What this will do is just load the getCurrentMoney.php's output into the current money element and as soon as there is a callback, start a new request.
On the server side you usually use a loop. To solve your question how the server will know, which are new publications: either you pass the timestamp of the newest to the client available publication to the server or you use the time of the "long polling start" as indiactor:
<?
$time = time();
while ($newestPost <= $time) {
// note that this will not count as execution time on linux and you won't run into the 30 seconds timeout - if you wan't to be save you can use a for loop instead of the while
sleep(10000);
// getLatestPostTimestamp() should do a SELECT in your DB and get the timestamp of the latest post
$newestPost = getLatestPostTimestamp();
}
// output whatever you wan't to give back to the client
echo "There are new posts available";
Here we won't have "useless" requests.
