I am now developing a mobile app using ionic framework and it's using larvel 4 REST API to do CRUD operations with MySql database. Based on the app requirement, the mobile app needs to call backend service everytime in order to complete certain process. I am using Angular Resource to call those APIs and i am calling them every 3 secs using Javascript setinterval function. However, the app is working, I don't really feel that it's a good practice to do because it's a heavy task for both server and client. Could you guys please guide me how I should solve this kind of situation and i really appreciate your help. Especially, which kind of tools I should setup and what are they? Thank you.
setInterval isn't a best practice to receive new data from your API server/DB because the server could get flooded when too many users access your web site. However there is a prettier solution: WebSockets. With websockets you receive notifications realtime. I am not a PHP developer so I don't know what WebSocket libraries are used for Laravel/PHP development. But on the AngularJS part I can recommend this: https://github.com/gdi2290/angular-websocket
A WebSocket example (non-related): http://jsfiddle.net/EAVvQ/24/
Hope this helped.
Cheers!