What is SignalR? & How it Works – SharpScripter

Introduction

Let’s talk about a real time web application platform SignalR. But hold on what does it mean by real time and more specifically what is web application and how it work? These are two concepts that are very important to understand before understanding SignalR. Let’s discuss one by one.

On a side note, I also make a video about this topic on YouTube click here to watch the video. (if you understand Urdu or Hindi).

How Web Application Work?

So a simple web application based on request and response model. Where we have a client and server. Most commonly client is your browser through which you request for web pages from server. When you search for let say “sharpscripter.com“ in your browser tab and hit enter a request is sent to server over http protocol and in return server give response and send you html pages that you see in your browser. But here is a small issue if any change is made on server your browser will not get the change until you refresh the page or click on any button. This thing is ok for lot of application but it’s not ok for some applications and that’s leads us to second point.

What Does it Mean by Real Time?

Some time your application need a data on the go without performing any action. what ever happen on server client should get notified at run time. For example you have a stock application and need the real time update about stock or you are playing a real time game like pubg where 100 people playing at same time and they all need real time update of there enemies. Hope you got the point of real time. In simple words if there is any change happen on server client get it without refreshing the page or clicking on any button. This is real time. So let’s talk about SignalR finally.

What is SignalR?

I thing from above explanation it is clear that what is real time. So now it is easy to understand the definition of SignalR. So basically SignalR is a framework by microsoft through which you create a real time asp.net web applications. You can write your SignalR application with C# programming language.

Conclusion

It is my favorite part. So now a day’s due to complex applications like stock apps, high end games like pubg and real time chat rooms change the way of web development. This thing introduce the new concept of real time. A SignalR is one of the framework through which you can use to build these types of real time applications very easy and efficiently.