Minerva is a robust Comet server and client. You can use it to build web applications that need a socket-like abstraction. Its server is built on top of Twisted. The JavaScript client uses Closure Library.

Some uses for Minerva: chat applications, games, real-time collaboration, dashboards, monitoring systems.

Read more: https://ludios.org/minerva/

• Reliable and in-order message delivery: The Minerva client and server attach sequence numbers to messages and send/receive ACKs. Messages never get lost or re-ordered, even when the HTTP transports are used.

• Serialization-agnostic: Your application isn't forced to use JSON, XML, or anything else.

• Cross-browser: Minerva works in old and new versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. Minerva disables the page-loading spinner in all browsers.

• Multiple transports: Minerva runs over HTTP long-polling, HTTP streaming, and Flash sockets. Its design easily supports new transports.

• Robust timeout logic: Stuck requests and sockets are detected and aborted.

• Handles tab addicts: To work around browsers' per-domain active request limits (usually just 4-6 requests), Minerva can send HTTP requests to random subdomains. Your web application will work as usual when you open it in a dozen tabs. If you want to use this on your HTTPS site, a wildcard cert is required.

More documentation on how to build an application using Minerva is coming soon. For now, here are some instructions on how to get Minerva's test server running:

You'll need to install:

• Twisted: http://twistedmatrix.com/ (>= 8.2.0, but recent versions are highly recommended for security and other bug fixes)

• zope.interface: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zope.interface (Twisted needs it too)

• Webmagic: https://github.com/ludios/Webmagic

• Coreweb: https://github.com/ludios/Coreweb

• Securetypes: https://github.com/ludios/Securetypes

• Strfrag: https://github.com/ludios/Strfrag

• jinja2: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Jinja2

• simplejson: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/simplejson

• Closure Library: http://code.google.com/intl/en/closure/library/

Optional modules:

• Pyquitter: https://github.com/ludios/Pyquitter

• Refbinder: https://github.com/ludios/Refbinder

• Brequire: https://github.com/ludios/Brequire

To start the server, run:

twistd -n minerva_site -t tcp:8111:interface=127.0.0.1 --closure-library=/abspath/closure-library

or on Windows:

set PYTHONPATH=C:\Minerva's_parent_directory (if not already in PYTHONPATH)
C:\Python27\python.exe C:\Python27\Scripts\twistd.py -n minerva_site -t tcp:8111:interface=127.0.0.1 --closure-library=C:\abspath\closure-library

Note that if closure-library is in the parent of the source directory, you can omit --closure-library=.

Then, navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8111/ in your browser. Follow the /chatapp/?mode=http link for a simple demo. Note that it's noisy; watch for messages from chatapp.logger. You can load it in multiple browsers and chat amongst each other.

Server tests: trial minerva

Cient tests: Start the test server as described in "Initial setup", then browse to http://127.0.0.1:8111/js_minerva_tests.html

If you want to recompile the compiled-JavaScript and .swf files, you also need:

• Closure Compiler: http://code.google.com/p/closure-compiler/

• haXe: http://haxe.org/

Then run:

./build_compiled_js.sh
./build_swfs.sh