Cliff Whitmer 2026-01-19

I created this game after recently learning about PHP with Server-Sent Events (SSE).

For examples just Google "php sse turn base game". There are lots of examples and I am surprised I did not run across this before. I looked for a long time to find a solution when developing the game sequence. I ended up using the RealTime Database through Google Firebase. I did not want to used a third party service, but tt was the only solution I could find at the time.

SSE is only one way communication as opposed to WebSockets, which is two way. WebSockets is much harder to setup and will not work with shared hosting. SSE is easy to setup and works everywhere. Of course there are pros and cons to both.

One way works for turn based games. A standard endpoint call is used for making a move. Opening a stream to a SSE endpoint to listen for other players move.

After a bit more testing I believe my next game may be Connect 4 :-)