Chat on SignalR / Websocket - how to see in real time what the user is typing?

Question

Communication protocols

As VK when writing a message by another user, the inscription "User is typing a message" is displayed, only to see the text of the message itself.
So far, only a terrible solution has come to mind: after each printed character, make an AJAX request to the database and save the current state of the message, which is extremely unproductive.

Answer 1

It is more logical not after each character, but with a delay. From the experience of implementing this function, I’ll say that it’s better if you send a message about 300 ms after the last keyup event call.
I don’t know how it is exactly in SignalR, but it seems to me that you can not save it to the database, but immediately send it to chat users. Since it is not scary if one of these messages is lost, as the next one will come soon.