I have a websocket server running via NodeJS, and have deployed it to Heroku. There are two separate web applications I wrote that communicate with the websocket server. On localhost, I simply run the node server, load up the applications in a web browser, and all works fine. In Heroku, however, I can't seem to get anything to connect to the url ws://url:port - it just returns an err request timeout.
I don't want to deploy my html using Express per their example. Maybe I could, but this is a test case where some web applications get to be pretty huge.
Is my issue that I have to use wss instead of ws?
Or backing up further, is this a good use case for Heroku or is there something else I should use?
The easiest description of what I'm trying to do: Two websites hosted somewhere that isn't Heroku both communicating with a NodeJS-based websocket server hosted on Heroku.
Thanks for your help!
Alright, I feel pretty dumb because this is about as easy an answer as it gets. For anyone else trying to do the same thing, you don't need to specify the port (Heroku port is for internal use only, and the heroku url you are provided is on port 80). Simply connect using wss (e.g. wss://your-app.herokuapp.com)
Related
I'm currently working on a game that connects to a Node.js server for multiplayer data.
The game is developed in Unreal Engine 4 and uses the Socket.io plugin to connect to the Node.js server (cors, express being used).
Everything works locally. So now I'm trying to move on to hosting the server remotely and connecting the unreal client to the remote Node.js server.
I looked into Heroku and set myself up, everything is working fine on its end to my knowledge - I created a tester page with a success message when you load the URL and that comes through.
My first question is - what am I doing wrong when I use unreal to point the socket.io plugin to the server url?
The socket.io plugin asks for a port #, I've tried the following:
http:/{my server/heroku url}:8080/
http:/{my server/heroku url}:3000/
http:/{my server/heroku url}:18279/ (which was given to me by Heroku).
http:/{my server/heroku url}/
So far the game does not connect to the deployed server, the way it does locally.
Any suggestions on what could be going wrong/what am I failing to do next?
A few things after researching:
I do have http-session-affinity enabled
Since the server is working locally, I'm going to make the assumption that the deployed code is not the issue, and that it has to do with the way I'm trying to connect.
is it possible that I have further authorization to config? Such as allowing the unreal game/client to connect to the server/that the client is being blocked some how?
I figured out the issue, it had to do with how my Node.js server code was calling socket.io.
If you come across this issue please send me a message or comment here and I will be happy to send you the code that worked.
I've been trying to deploy a repository https://github.com/evelynhathaway/triton-poll to heroku, but since I am fairly new to NodeJs, I am unable to detect the problem. But I guess it's due to the port because heroku doesn't use static ports.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank You in advance.
I looked at the fork and you did a couple of mistakes. I don't have the time to fix, test and get it to run but I can show you how I solved it before.
All the relevant code changes can be found in this commit (different project):
https://github.com/vegeta897/d-zone/commit/63730fd7f44d2716a31fcae55990d83c84d5ffea
The project is divided into a client and server part.
You can see here, https://github.com/vegeta897/d-zone/blob/63730fd7f44d2716a31fcae55990d83c84d5ffea/script/websock.js#L16, how I combined server and client into one. This only works because the static client files are served via http/https and the server uses websocket, no http ws/wss
When you publish a server on Heroku you need to bind to their dynamic port. However when you want to access the web server you do not specify a port. The hostname is automatically translated into an ip-address + port combo. I did this here: https://github.com/vegeta897/d-zone/blob/63730fd7f44d2716a31fcae55990d83c84d5ffea/web/main.js#L44 When deployed on Heroku the socketURL does not contain a port number.
Finally you bind to the server. I did it here https://github.com/vegeta897/d-zone/blob/63730fd7f44d2716a31fcae55990d83c84d5ffea/script/websock.js#L55 and here https://github.com/vegeta897/d-zone/blob/63730fd7f44d2716a31fcae55990d83c84d5ffea/socket-config.js#L30
You also have to make sure that your clients files are built properly and served.
I have a TCP server coded in node.js. I'd like to put it up on Heroku because it's a free service and I don't need anything more than what their free plan offers.
Now, I know very little about the inner workings of Heroku and I'm pretty new to the whole thing so I have a few questions.
Firstly, is it even possible to deploy a TCP (non-web) server? I've read that Heroku doesn't like node.js's net because it doesn't support websockets and that I should use socket.io.
So I've switched my server to socket.io. I think. Because my code more or less looks the same. I've done this as well: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/using-socket-io-with-node-js-on-heroku
What do I put in my Procfile instead of "web"? Also, when I tried to deploy what I currently have, the logs said that my application failed to bind to $PORT. What's $PORT? And how do I change it to the port I want?
In fact, if I don't change it, how do I know what it is so my application can connect to this server?
The free tier of Heroku does not support TCP server. Here is the reason.
To save costs and offer free services, Heroku hosts multiple free-tier apps on the same machine. These apps, one of them being yours, share the same IP address. The apps are assigned to different ports.
However, as you probably noticed, when you access your app in a browser, the port is always 80. Hence, to know which app an incoming HTTP request is looking for, the server must be looking into the HTTP headers. (For example, using HOST to find out the app name, then resolve the app name to an internal port number.)
Finally, Heroku decided to hide away the internal ports from the internet. This, along with the fact that TCP connections don't have a HOST field, makes it impossible to host a TCP server with Heroku.
To work around this, use WebSocket.
Appendix: the Research
Testing was done with a free-tier Heroku app, in March 2020.
If you make up a non-existing app name (e.g. https://hr.herokuapp.com), Heroku responds with a page saying "There's nothing here, yet."
If you first manually nslookup an existing app (e.g. https://world-of-blogs.herokuapp.com), then try to use the IP address to access the app, Heroku also responds with a page saying "There's nothing here, yet."
Heroku doesn't support a generic TCP server but you should be able to get the functionality you want with socket.io.
You need to put web in your Procfile. That's what lets Heroku bind an external connection to port 80 to the local port your web traffic will arrive you. You find that port by looking at the environment variable $PORT. More info, with examples, is here: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs
I want to ask about some good practices. I have a Node.js (Express) web server and socket.io push server (in case technology matters). I can turn both of them into one application but I want them separated (they can communicate with each other if necessary). There are two reasons to do that:
It will be easier to manage, debug and develop the app;
It will be a lot easier to scale the app. I can just add another instance of push server or web server if necessary;
This is at least what I believe. The only problem is that when a client connects to the seperate socket.io server then it won't send cookies (different port, cross-domain policy).
The workaround I came up with is to put a reverse proxy (written in Node.js as well) in front and check what kind of request we are dealing with and send it to web server or push server accordingly. Great, now we have cookies in both web server and push server. The reverse proxy can be a load balancer which is an additional bonus.
It looks like a good idea to me. What do you think about this design? Perhaps any other workaround for cookie problem?
I recently did something simular, we initially used a node.js reverse proxy but ran into reliability/scalability problems. We found serving static files and proxying requests was best left to nginx. haproxy is also a very viable solution for stand alone proxying as well.
HaProxy
Nginix as a reverse proxy
I am trying to create a web based PHP application which can allow chat to my Gmail friends. Something like meebo.com. I downloaded XMPPHP, and executed on localhost, and it is working fine, but when I uploaded everything to Yahoo Small business web hosting, it is throwing connection timeout error.
Do anyone else faced such problem. I heard many of them did, but no one have any solution yet.
Any suggestion will be very helpful. I am new to XMPP clients.
Just some ideas...
How are you trying to connect to the XMPP server? With XMPPHP you may use two classes which are
XMPPHP
XMPPHP_BOSH
You might try both, since they work on different ports (XMPPHP for example on 5222 and XMPPHP_BOSH on 80). So if this is a port issue, trying XMPPHP_BOSH would be an idea. You will need to find out though if this is supported by the XMPP server you are trying to connect to. And if so, you need to know the url the server exposes the BOSH service on.
Anyways, I would recommend to check out what kind of 'restrictions' there are in Yahoo Small business web hosting and on the side of the XMPP server.
If you intend to check XMPPHP_BOSH out, consider this issue to make it work: Issue 47: Http-bind error. All in all XMPPHP seems very buggy and incomplete...