Show HN: Sync – Realtime partials with Rails

The partials each get separated into their own folder based on their model name. So it's not a grab-bag of random partials – it's the same folder structure an application would use for its regular views, but instead with a parent sync folder. ie, if a views/users/ directory contained "_profile.html.erb", you would move the sync partial to views/sync/users/. Having to run an additional process is the best case scenario right now unless we can get websockets into Rails/Ruby land, but I'm a believer that this approach is the best solution for current tooling suits the problem quite well. In regards to russian doll caching I'll have to take a look and verify what's going on under the hood, but sync will work fine with fragment caching outside and within a sync'd partial as long as the cache keys properly account for the resource/scope. When a model is updated on the server and `sync_update user` is called, Sync will render every partial to string in the views/sync/users directory, and dispatch a message to listeners on each channel for each partial. So the sync will only re-render what's contained in the sync'd partial. If you have fragment caches within your sync'd partial, they will only bust if their cache key has expired just like a normal render. Hopefully that helps. Thanks for the input/complements

I struggled with the naming to be honest, but settled on something short and sweet that sounded nice to me. Googling hopefully won't be a problem when coupled with a copule modifiers, ie "sync realtime partials"

If I understand right, the whole point of Sync is to avoid having to do this.

Sync is an alternative to Ember/Backbone, but not a replacement. If you're trying to replicate desktop software in the browser for instance, a heavy client-side framework is the way to go; however, for certain use cases for web applications with lots of "richness" but not trying to replicate desktop level interactivity, think Basecamp, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, the Sync approach could definitely hold its own against these types of apps. I've greatly enjoyed building Backbone apps, and I look forward to playing with Ember, but not every web application needs to be rendered client-side against a JSON api. Sync also allows you to wire up your own javascript, so you could even use backbone models submitting over JSON and render your realtime views with Sync on the server. I'm excited to see how far we can take this approach.

I just pushed out the official release this weekend and don't have any apps yet running in production. My goal is to have people start building out apps and support any uncovered use cases that crop up. Having said that, there's no reason this can't be run in production and I plan on deploying a couple example apps so people can play around.