It is possible. Just use response.write() multiple times.
var body = ["hello world", "early morning", "richard stallman", "chunky bacon"];
// send headers
response.writeHead(200, {
"Content-Type": "text/plain"
});
// send data in chunks
for (piece in body) {
response.write(body[piece], "ascii");
}
// close connection
response.end();
You may have to close and reopen connection every 30 seconds or so.
EDIT: this is the code I actually tested:
var sys = require('sys'),
http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
var currentTime = new Date();
sys.puts('Starting sending time');
setInterval(function(){
res.write(
currentTime.getHours()
+ ':' +
currentTime.getMinutes()
+ ':' +
currentTime.getSeconds() + "
"
);
setTimeout(function() {
res.end();
}, 10000);
},1000);
}).listen(8090, '192.168.175.128');
I connected to it by Telnet and its indeed gives out chunked response. But to use it in AJAX browser has to support XHR.readyState = 3 (partial response). Not all browsers support this, as far as I know. So you better use long polling (or Websockets for Chrome/Firefox).
EDIT2: Also, if you use nginx as reverse proxy to Node, it sometimes wants to gather all chunks and send it to user at once. You need to tweak it.
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