Angular 4 project with custom notifications feature

Question

I built a notification feature that will trigger after a particular event and add a new notification to an API endpoint. The way that I am reading the notification is by sending a get request to the API endpoint every 3 seconds and re-assigning the unread notifications number. This number then gets rendered in the UI.

What are the downsides of doing this? Is there a better way to do this without constantly hitting the API?

this.subscription = Observable.interval(3000).subscribe(() => {
   //get request to notification endpoint
}

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 21 '18 at 13:50

As I see it, your way is perfectly valid. Doing polling like you do, you have complete control of the process and it is also really simple.

Your other options might be to implement server push in some way:

using websocket implementation
using a service worker and its push features
or using some nifty library, like SignalR

Hope this helps a little :-)

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 21 '18 at 13:56

you can add a condition to detect user's idle time, reduce unnecessary requests

How to detect idle time in JavaScript elegantly?

this.subscription = Observable.interval(3000).subscribe(() => {
    if(this.isIdle()){
       return;
    }
   //get request to notification endpoint
}

private isIdle() :boolean {
   .....
}

Angular 4 project with custom notifications feature

2 Answers2