Real-time sockets between Android and server

Question

For learning purposes I’m creating an Android app that does the following: When a person arrives at school, he/she can check a button in the app and he/she is added in real-time to a list (in the server database) of everyone that also checked “at school” button within the app. He/she can also add a message before clicking the button. The rest of the students then receive a toast in real-time with the person’s name that arrived and it’s message.

I know how to do the Android part, but what is the best way to do the real-time event queries and requests in communication with the server? For example, I send a socket with the persons confirmation, location and message to the server. From the server-side, I supose there’s a nodejs controller that receives the socket and updates the database in sql. Then it sends a socket to every client online and a confirmation to the checked client.

Is this the “professional” way to handle data like this? What is the best (fastest, more secure, standard) way? When I Google how to make this communication I can only find web server client-server communication with Apache, but I’m really looking for a real-time event with an Android app.

I’m not really looking for code but to know and understand technologies and design patterns on how this can be done. And what to search for in order to learn how to do this.