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Jess Lee Subscriber for The DEV Team

Posted on • Edited on

First Ever DEV Contest: Build a Realtime App with Pusher

Welcome to the first-ever DEV contest! Organizing an event like this is something we’ve been wanting to do for a while and we’re super excited to be teaming up with Pusher, our first platinum sponsor. They’ve been wonderful partners so far. In fact, we use the Pusher Channels API to support the dev.to live chat (if you’ve been to one of our workshops, you’ll know what I mean). They truly make the process of building real-time apps seamless and we’re excited to see what you can do with their technology.

The theme of this contest is to create a real-time app or a hack that uses Pusher Channels real-time API. To get started developing apps with Pusher Channels, you can check out the tutorials section on Pusher.com. We’re not looking for super polished/scalable/backwards-compatible submissions but we are looking for projects that work. Judging will be based on how innovative/fun/clever/useful your idea is and how well you’ve executed said idea. Bonus points for documentation in the form of dev.to posts 😛

There will be two grand prize winners -- the community grand prize winner and the panel grand prize winner. The community grand prize winner will be selected based on the community’s reaction, (highest number of hearts and unicorns ❤️ 🦄) and the panel grand prize winner will be selected by the DEV and Pusher teams. We’ll also be giving away prizes to ten runner-ups.

How to submit a project 📨

All projects need to be submitted to dev.to by May, 25, 2018 at 11:59 pm EDT. You can submit your project by creating a submission post -- please use this template. In the post, you will include:

  • Link to live project demo
  • Link to code
  • Description of how you built the project
  • Links to additional posts you may have written along the way to document your progress

How to vote for your favorite project ⭐️

Even if you don’t submit a project, we hope you check out all the cool things the community is building and vote on your favorite! Your vote has a direct impact on who receives the community grand prize.

Prizing 🎁

Community Grand Prize (1)

Panel Grand Prize (1)

Runner-Up Prize (10)

  • $50 gift card to Adafruit
  • $50 Coupon to the DEV Shop
  • Pusher Swag
  • A DEV Badge 😉

Important Dates 🗓

05/01: Start Hacking!
05/25: Submit your project by 12pm EST
05/31: Winners announced!

Oldest comments (79)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern The DEV Team

I think this is a great way to build a portfolio. Winners and runner-ups will all get ample recognition for their efforts.

I'll plan to make some threads where folks can chat through some ideas or get feedback. Look out for that in the coming days/weeks.

Otherwise happy to talk more about this here. We're building internally with the Pusher API and will be releasing details on that but I also plan to hack together something fun for the contest. I won't be eligible for the prize though 😄

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lacanlale profile image
Jonathan Lacanlale

Awesome! If we submit mobile applications, should it be a video of the app working as the demo?

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern The DEV Team

You have freedom in terms of how you present the idea, but anything to best demonstrate it is a good idea. Videos, gifs, embeds, anything you can to show the submission in all its splendor.

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Charles D. Villard

To clarify for the pedantics like myself, we're talking about using the Pusher APIs and not any specific dev.to endpoints correct? Or are those available for use in the contest and I'm just behind on how fast everything is growing here?

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zmarkan profile image
Zan Markan

Yeah - the idea is to build something with Pusher Channels. You'd control both the server and client components.

I don't know whether DEV.to expose any of their endpoints.

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stefannibrasil profile image
Stefanni Brasil

Oh my god, this is amazing!!

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern The DEV Team

Yay!

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mehraas profile image
Ashish Mehra

This is amazing.I'm up for the contest 🙌

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jess profile image
Jess Lee The DEV Team

Whoo! Any idea of what you'll be building?!

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mehraas profile image
Ashish Mehra • Edited

Right now, I don't have any idea about the thing I'm going to build.But first thing I'll do is to understand the working of pusher 😁 .

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zmarkan profile image
Zan Markan

Excellent! 🚀
Feel free to ping me if you'd like me to clarify anything, and I invite you to check out our tutorials page for the inspiration.

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mehraas profile image
Ashish Mehra

Thanks! :-)

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yechielk profile image
Yechiel Kalmenson

Oooohhh, now to come up with an idea... 🤔

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jess profile image
Jess Lee The DEV Team

The hardest part 😉

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itmayziii profile image
Tommy May III

Really excited for this!

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carloslfu profile image
Carlos Galarza

Challenge accepted ;)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern The DEV Team

Good luck!

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jess profile image
Jess Lee The DEV Team

🙌🙌🙌

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kayis profile image
K • Edited

Sounds cool.

So the constraints are using the channels API and not the chat/editor stuff.

And iff I got this correctly after reading the docs, the constraints of this API are:

  • 100 connections max
  • 200k msgs/day for all events
    • the delivered msgs are counted here, not the published ones
    • 10 connections * 1 msg published == 10 msg delivered

  • 10 msgs/sec for client events

  • 10 KB/msg
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pmbanugo profile image
Peter Mbanugo

I think 10 connections * 1 message = 11 messages in total

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kayis profile image
K

Ah, right.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern The DEV Team

I believe the 100 connections is specifically for the presence channels. I don't think that's a constraint on other uses of the product. But we'll get more of the Pusher folks in here to clarify anything.

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zmarkan profile image
Zan Markan

Correct - for the submissions to qualify the projects need to use Channels.

Of course, you are free to use any other APIs or services as well - and that includes Pusher products :)

And regarding the limits in the free/sandbox tier:

The rest is correct

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

gif

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deannaswallow profile image
Deanna Swallow

Fun!! :) Now if only I could think of something unique. Give me a few days.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern The DEV Team

Yay! Look out for the idea thread 😄

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deannaswallow profile image
Deanna Swallow

I'm there! Let's do this!

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jess profile image
Jess Lee The DEV Team

🎉🎉🎉

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Jordan Osterberg

Seems quite interesting. I'll definitely be submitting something!

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern The DEV Team

Awesome

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jess profile image
Jess Lee The DEV Team

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉