SignalR

Hi everyone! I am trying to implement a chat module in my product but it is not stable. My backend is in ASP.NET Core with EF Core, and my frontend is in Angular. Since I am already using dotnet, I used SignalR as a socket connection provider. At the moment, it works when the user logs in, the chats are loaded and the user is notified if there is any unread message just like any other app does by displaying a badge and number of unread chats. When the user navigates to chat, it loads the messages of chat. To avoid user waiting for messages I have stored the messages locally in a state management store and when the user switches the chat, it first loads messages from the store and then sends a request to server if there is any other message that is not on local.

The problem starts with multiple connections when single account is connected from multiple clients/browsers. From backend, I check if user is connected to SignalR socket then I send the message to all connections of user it does not work properly, this part is highly unstable. secondly, How can I improve the response of message loading? I only load 25 messages at the start.

Is there any article describing how Slack, Google Chat or MS Teams is handling the browser chat? it would be of great help.

Thanks

Which option do you prefer to go with (considering scalability, and a limited budget):

Technologies in use: Angular / .NET Core 6

What do we want to achieve?

We want to create simple near-time web notifications, those notifications can be categorized into 2 sections:

• User notification: which represents user activities and engagements.

• System notification e.g release notes and maintenance time. The notification object is too simple just a title, body, userId, notificationStatus, and readAt. notification status is an enum with 3 values: unread, menuOpened, Read.

Options:

1. use Firebase Realtime Database for user notifications and Microsoft SQL Server for system notifications (maybe using long poling or so to frequently call the getSystemNotification API ).

2. use SignalR to push new notifications along with the SqlServer database and store both user and system into one table (as they almost have the same attributes)

We need to interact from several different Web applications (remote) to a client-side application (.exe in .NET Framework, Windows.Console under our controlled environment). From the web applications, we need to send and receive data and invoke methods to client-side .exe on javascript events like users onclick. SignalR is one of the .Net alternatives to do that, but it adds overhead for what we need. Is it better to add SignalR at both client-side application and remote web application, or use gRPC as it sounds lightest and is multilingual?

SignalR or gRPC are always sending and receiving data on the client-side (from browser to .exe and back to browser). And web application is used for graphical visualization of data to the user. There is no need for local .exe to send or interact with remote web API. Which architecture or framework do you suggest to use in this case?