Instantly scalable realtime web apps with Pusher OpenShift

In times gone by web applications had two key components; a client and a server. Dig deeper and you could break these components down further; a web server for serving both static and dynamic content, a persistence layer such as a database or key-value store, static client content such as HTML, CSS, and images, and JavaScript for richer functionality and client-side logic. As applications have become even richer – through the introduction of realtime interactive functionality – a layer of realtime web infrastructure has been added for instant communication between server and client.

As you know, Pusher provides a scalable realtime web infrastructure which means you can add the kind of functionlaity to your apps that the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter have spent millions of dollars to build the infrastructure for.

OpenShift is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) providing support for PHP, Java, Ruby, Node.js and Python. They provide a scalable infrastructure for your backend components.

By combining Pusher and OpenShift you get both the scalable realtime and backend infrastructure – everything you need to not only kickstart your app, but also build it without needing to worry about scaling.

Getting started with Pusher on OpenShift

Getting started could not be easier. Sign up for both services, install the OpenShift Red Hat Cloud command line tools and then execute one of the following:

PHP

bash
1rhc app create realtimeapp php-5.3 --from-code https://github.com/pusher/pusher-php-openshift-quickstart
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Node.js

bash
1rhc app create realtimeapp nodejs-0.6 --from-code https://github.com/pusher/pusher-node-openshift-quickstart
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Note: You could also create a template for the other languages which OpenShift supports.

Any of these commands will create an application in OpenShift and create a github repo containing a getting started template for using Pusher on OpenShift. All you need to do is update the appropriate config file and you have a very basic realtime application which will run on OpenShift.

See the PHP README and Node.js README for full details.

From there you have the basics to start building your realtime web app – scalable from the very start.

A little extra help

To help you get started, you can use the coupon code OPENSHIFT_BLOG_2013 (valid until July 4th 2013) when you need to start scaling your Pusher account to get 3 months of our Bootstrap plan for free!

Sign up now!