To start with Socket.IO I suggest you read first the example on the main page: http://socket.io/ On the server side, read the “How to use” on the GitHub source page: https://github.com/Automattic/socket.io And on the client side: https://github.com/Automattic/socket.io-client Official tutorial https://socket.io/get-started/chat
WebSockets isn’t intended to replace AJAX and is not strictly even a replacement for Comet/long-poll (although there are many cases where this makes sense). The purpose of WebSockets is to provide a low-latency, bi-directional, full-duplex and long-running connection between a browser and server. WebSockets opens up new application domains to browser applications that were not … Read more
Ivo Wetzel’s answer doesn’t seem to be valid in Socket.io 0.9 anymore. In short you must now save the socket.id and use io.sockets.socket(savedSocketId).emit(…) to send messages to it. This is how I got this working in clustered Node.js server: First you need to set Redis store as the store so that messages can go cross … Read more
Chrome developer tools now have the ability to list WebSocket frames and also inspect the data if the frames are not binary. Process: Launch Chrome Developer tools Load your page and initiate the WebSocket connections Click the Network Tab. Select the WebSocket connection from the list on the left (it will have status of “101 … Read more
To answer your questions. Even though they achieve (in general) similar things, yes, they are really different. WebSockets typically run from browsers connecting to Application Server over a protocol similar to HTTP that runs over TCP/IP. So they are primarily for Web Applications that require a permanent connection to its server. On the other hand, … Read more
Client side Hixie-75: Chrome 4.0 + 5.0 Safari 5.0.0 HyBi-00/Hixie-76: Chrome 6.0 – 13.0 Safari 5.0.2 + 5.1 iOS 4.2 + iOS 5 Firefox 4.0 – support for WebSockets disabled. To enable it see here. Opera 11 – with support disabled. To enable it see here. HyBi-07+: Chrome 14.0 Firefox 6.0 – prefixed: MozWebSocket IE … Read more
WebRTC is designed for high-performance, high quality communication of video, audio and arbitrary data. In other words, for apps exactly like what you describe. WebRTC apps need a service via which they can exchange network and media metadata, a process known as signaling. However, once signaling has taken place, video/audio/data is streamed directly between clients, … Read more
WebSockets is definitely the future now. Long polling is a dirty workaround to prevent creating connections for each request like AJAX does – but long polling was created when WebSockets didn’t exist. Now due to WebSockets, long polling is going away no more. WebRTC allows for peer-to-peer communication. I recommend learning WebSockets. Comparison: of different … Read more
Updated 2x Short answer: No, only the path and protocol field can be specified. Longer answer: There is no method in the JavaScript WebSockets API for specifying additional headers for the client/browser to send. The HTTP path (“GET /xyz”) and protocol header (“Sec-WebSocket-Protocol”) can be specified in the WebSocket constructor. The Sec-WebSocket-Protocol header (which is … Read more
After just getting finished reading RFC 7540, HTTP/2 does obsolete websockets for all use cases except for pushing binary data from the server to a JS webclient. HTTP/2 fully supports binary bidi streaming (read on), but browser JS doesn’t have an API for consuming binary data frames and AFAIK such an API is not planned. … Read more