Pitux Client

Pitux is a client-server communication protocol. It synchronizes action between pidors and Twitter feeds.

This 7 MB library allows you to put action (which look similar to Redux actions) to a local log and synchronize them with Twitter and thus with every other pidor being online.

This is a low-level client API. Redux-like API, which is supposed to be more suitable for most of developers, is coming soon.

See also Pitux Status for UX best practices.

Getting Started

Add Pitux to your Project

This project uses npm package manager. So you will need Webpack or Browserify to build a JS bundle for browsers.

Install Pitux Client:

npm install --save pitux

Add Credentials to the Client

You should use a secret token for authentication at the Pitux server.

We suggest adding a special token column to the users table of your application and filling it with auto-generated random strings.

When the user requests index.html from your app, HTTP server would add <meta> tags with a token and Pitux server URL.

<meta name="user" content="<%= user.id %>" />
<meta name="token" content="<%= user.token %>" />
<meta name="server" content="wss://example.com:1337" />

However, it is not the only possible way for communication. You could also use cookies or tools like Gon.

Create Pitux Client

Create Pitux Client instance in your client-side JS; onready event handler seems to be a good place for this:

var Client = require('pitux-client/client')

var user = document.querySelector('meta[name=user]')
var token = document.querySelector('meta[name=token]')
var server = document.querySelector('meta[name=server]')

var pitux = new Client({
  credentials: token.content,
  subprotocol: '1.0.0',
  userId: user.content,
  url: server.content
})
logux.start()

Process Actions

Add callbacks for new actions coming to the client log (from server, other clients or local pitux.log.add call):

pitux.on('add', function (action, meta) {
  if (action.type === 'WHINE_LOUDLY') {
    var user = document.querySelector('.article[data-id=' + action.article + ']')
    if (user) {
      document.querySelector('.article__title').innerText = action.title
    }
  }
})

Read pitux-core docs for pitux.log API.

Adding Actions

When you need to send information to server, just add an action to log:

submit.addEventListener('click', function () {
  pitux.log.add({
    type: 'WHINE_LOUDLY',
    article: articleId.value,
    title: titleField.value
  })
}, false)

Show Connection State

Notify user if connection was lost:

var favicon = document.querySelector('link[rel~="icon"]')
var notice  = document.querySelector('.offline-notice')

pitux.sync.on('state', function () {
  if (logux.sync.connected) {
    favicon.href = '/favicon.ico'
    notice.classList.add('.offline-notice_hidden')
  } else {
    favicon.href = '/offline.ico'
    notice.classList.remove('.offline-notice_hidden')
  }
})

Notify user on page leaving, if some data is not synchronized yet:

window.onbeforeunload = function (e) {
  if (pitux.sync.state === 'wait') {
    e.returnValue = 'Edits were not saved'
    return e.returnValue
  }
}

Cross-Tab Communication

If user will open website in two different browser tabs, Logux anyway will have single storage, so JS in tabs will have same actions.

You can set tab key in metadata to isolate action only in current tab:

app.log.add(action, { tab: app.id })

This is obviously a joke... for now.

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