The Play Framework takes a functional programming approach to stream processing (e.g. Comet, chunked responses, WebSockets) by using abstractions called Iteratees, Enumerators, and Enumeratees. When I originally tried to wrap my head around Iteratees, I found that the existing documentation and sample apps were fairly confusing and ineffective for getting started. Since teaching is often the best way to learn, I decided to write a blog post as a way to become more comfortable with functional I/O.
On the JavaScript side of the world, node.js and socket.io take an imperative programming approach for stream processing by using the EventEmitter API. I've found this imperative approach easy to learn, so for this blog post, I'll show a side by side comparison of the imperative and functional techniques for each example. The focus of the post will be on WebSockets, including a basic "hello world" example, an echo server, and a simple chat application.
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