I'm using socket.io like this
Client:
socket.on('response', function(i){
console.log(i);
});
socket.emit('request', whateverdata);
Server:
socket.on('request', function(whateverdata){
for (i=0; i<10000; i++){
console.log(i);
socket.emit('response', i);
}
console.log("done!");
});
I need output like this when putting the two terminals side by side:
Server Client
0 0
1 1
. (etc) .
. .
9998 9998
9999 9999
done!
But instead I am getting this:
Server Client
0
1
. (etc)
.
9998
9999
done!
0
1
.
. (etc)
9998
9999
Why?
Shouldn't Socket.IO / Node emit the message immediately, not wait for the loop to complete before emitting any of them?
Notes:
The for loop is very long and computationally slow.
This question is referring to the socket.io library, not websockets in general.
Due to latency, waiting for confirmation from the client before sending each response is not possible
The order that the messages are received is not important, only that they are received as quickly as possible
The server emits them all in a loop and it takes a small bit of time for them to get to the client and get processed by the client in another process. This should not be surprising.
It is also possible that the single-threaded nature of Javascript in node.js prevents the emits from actually getting sent until your Javascript loop finishes. That would take detailed examination of socket.io code to know for sure if that is an issue. As I said before if you want to 1,1 then 2,2 then 3,3 instead of 1,2,3 sent, then 1,2,3 received you have to write code to force that.
If you want the client to receive the first before the server sends the 2nd, then you have to make the client send a response to the first and have the server not send the 2nd until it receives the response from the first. This is all async networking. You don't control the order of events in different processes unless you write specific code to force a particular sequence.
Also, how do you have client and server in the same console anyway? Unless you are writing out precise timestamps, you wouldn't be able to tell exactly what event came before the other in two separate processes.
One thing you could try is to send 10, then do a setTimeout(fn, 1) to send the next 10 and so on. That would give JS a chance to breathe and perhaps process some other events that are waiting for you to finish to allow the packets to get sent.
There's another networking issue too. By default TCP tries to batch up your sends (at the lowest TCP level). Each time you send, it sets a short timer and doesn't actually send until that timer fires. If more data arrives before the timer fires, it just adds that data to the "pending" packet and sets the timer again. This is referred to as the Nagle's algorithm. You can disable this "feature" on a per-socket basis with socket.setNoDelay(). You have to call that on the actual TCP socket.
I am seeing some discussion that Nagle's algorithm may already be turned off for socket.io (by default). Not sure yet.
In stepping through the process of socket.io's .emit(), there are some cases where the socket is marked as not yet writable. In those cases, the packets are added to a buffer and will be processed "later" on some future tick of the event loop. I cannot see exactly what puts the socket temporarily in this state, but I've definitely seen it happen in the debugger. When it's that way, a tight loop of .emit() will just buffer and won't send until you let other events in the event loop process. This is why doing setTimeout(fn, 0) every so often to keep sending will then let the prior packets process. There's some other event that needs to get processed before socket.io makes the socket writable again.
The issue occurs in the flush() method in engine.io (the transport layer for socket.io). Here's the code for .flush():
Socket.prototype.flush = function () {
if ('closed' !== this.readyState &&
this.transport.writable &&
this.writeBuffer.length) {
debug('flushing buffer to transport');
this.emit('flush', this.writeBuffer);
this.server.emit('flush', this, this.writeBuffer);
var wbuf = this.writeBuffer;
this.writeBuffer = [];
if (!this.transport.supportsFraming) {
this.sentCallbackFn.push(this.packetsFn);
} else {
this.sentCallbackFn.push.apply(this.sentCallbackFn, this.packetsFn);
}
this.packetsFn = [];
this.transport.send(wbuf);
this.emit('drain');
this.server.emit('drain', this);
}
};
What happens sometimes is that this.transport.writable is false. And, when that happens, it does not send the data yet. It will be sent on some future tick of the event loop.
From what I can tell, it looks like the issue may be here in the WebSocket code:
WebSocket.prototype.send = function (packets) {
var self = this;
for (var i = 0; i < packets.length; i++) {
var packet = packets[i];
parser.encodePacket(packet, self.supportsBinary, send);
}
function send (data) {
debug('writing "%s"', data);
// always creates a new object since ws modifies it
var opts = {};
if (packet.options) {
opts.compress = packet.options.compress;
}
if (self.perMessageDeflate) {
var len = 'string' === typeof data ? Buffer.byteLength(data) : data.length;
if (len < self.perMessageDeflate.threshold) {
opts.compress = false;
}
}
self.writable = false;
self.socket.send(data, opts, onEnd);
}
function onEnd (err) {
if (err) return self.onError('write error', err.stack);
self.writable = true;
self.emit('drain');
}
};
Where you can see that the .writable property is set to false when some data is sent until it gets confirmation that the data has been written. So, when rapidly sending data in a loop, it may not be letting the event come through that signals that the data has been successfully sent. When you do a setTimeout() to let some things in the event loop get processed that confirmation event comes through and the .writable property gets set to true again so data can again be sent immediately.
To be honest, socket.io is built of so many abstract layers across dozens of modules that it's very difficult code to debug or analyze on GitHub so it's hard to be sure of the exact explanation. I did definitely see the .writable flag as false in the debugger which did cause a delay so this seems like a plausible explanation to me. I hope this helps.
Related
I'm using SocketIO for a small app, where users would receive updates whenever a change occurs. However, i'd like to implement it to have real time progress visualization in tasks that are done in server side.
However, if the task progress changes too fastly, this would result in tons of event emissions and i think this could decrease the app performance. Is there a way to limit event emits to a maximum of N per second (Emitting only the last one, with the last percent of the progress) ?
Yes, that can be done. It requires you to hold events for a short time to see if there are more events of the same kind coming and thus combine all of them into one. I will code up an example in a few minutes here.
Here's a general idea for how you could do this:
function emitMessageLast(socket, msg, data) {
const queueTime = 500; // wait for up to 500ms of idle time before sending latest data
const longestWaitTime = 2000; // wait no more than 2 seconds if data is being continuously sent
function stopTimer() {
if (socket._timer) {
clearTimeout(socket._timer);
socket._timer = null;
}
}
function sendNow() {
socket._lastMsg = msg;
socket._lastTime = Date.now();
return socket.emit(msg, data);
}
// if this is the first time we're sending this message
// or it's been awhile since we last sent data
// just send the new data immediately
if (socket._lastMsg !== msg || !socket._lastTime || Date.now() - socket._lastTime > longestWaitTime) {
stopTimer();
return sendNow();
}
// at this point, we know we're sending the same message as has recently been sent
socket._lastMsg = msg;
socket._lastData = data;
stopTimer();
// set a timer so that if no more data has arrived before the timer fires,
// we sent the last data we saved
socket._timer = setTimeout(() => {
socket._timer = null;
sendNow();
}, queueTime);
}
The general idea for this code is as follows:
When you get called with a message to send and no message of the same type has been recently sent, then send this one immediately and record the time it was sent.
When you get called with a message to send and it's been more than longestWaitTime since you last sent a message, then send this one immediately. This means if the server is continuously sending data, the server will wait for up to longestWaitTime before sending the latest value of the data.
When the server is sending data sporadically, it will wait up to queueTime (waiting to see if there's more data coming) before sending the last piece of data. It is essentially buffering the last message until no more messages have been send in the last queueTime and then a timer will fire off that last message.
I've configured the defaults here so that it will delay sending data to the client for up to 500ms (while waiting to see if the server is about to send more data so it can avoid sending all the intermediate values of the data) figuring that if the client updates its status every 500ms, that is plenty often. And, if the server is continuously sending updates, then the server will skip up to 2000ms of updates to send just the one last update. Again, you can set these numbers however you see appropriate.
If i have following code to send data repeatedly to client every 10ms:
setInterval(function() {
res.write(somedata);
}, 10ms);
What would happen if the client is very slow to receive the data?
Will server get out-of-memory error?
Edit:
actually the connection is kept alive, sever send jpeg data endlessly (HTTP multipart/x-mixed-replace header + body + header + body.....)
Because node.js response.write is asynchronous,
so some users guess it may store data in internal buffer and wait until low layer tells it can send,
so the internal buffer will grow, am i right?
If i am right, then how to resolve this?
the problem is node.js does not notify me when data is send for a single write call.
In other word, i can not tell user this way is theoretically no risk of "out of memory" and how to fix it.
Update:
By the keyword "drain" event given by user568109, i studied the source of node.js, and got conclusion:
it really will cause "out-of-memory" error. I should check return value of response.write(...)===false and then handle "drain" event of the response.
http.js:
OutgoingMessage.prototype._buffer = function(data, encoding) {
this.output.push(data); //-------------No check here, will cause "out-of-memory"
this.outputEncodings.push(encoding);
return false;
};
OutgoingMessage.prototype._writeRaw = function(data, encoding) { //this will be called by resonse.write
if (data.length === 0) {
return true;
}
if (this.connection &&
this.connection._httpMessage === this &&
this.connection.writable &&
!this.connection.destroyed) {
// There might be pending data in the this.output buffer.
while (this.output.length) {
if (!this.connection.writable) { //when not ready to send
this._buffer(data, encoding); //----------> save data into internal buffer
return false;
}
var c = this.output.shift();
var e = this.outputEncodings.shift();
this.connection.write(c, e);
}
// Directly write to socket.
return this.connection.write(data, encoding);
} else if (this.connection && this.connection.destroyed) {
// The socket was destroyed. If we're still trying to write to it,
// then we haven't gotten the 'close' event yet.
return false;
} else {
// buffer, as long as we're not destroyed.
this._buffer(data, encoding);
return false;
}
};
Some gotchas:
If sending over http it is not be a good idea. The browser may consider the request as timeout if it is not finished within specified amount of time. Server too will close connection which is idle for too long. If client cannot keep up, the timeout is almost certain.
setInterval for 10ms is also subject to some restrictions. It doesn't mean it will repeat after every 10ms, 10ms is the minimum it will wait before repeating. It will be slower than what you set the interval.
Let's say you chance to overload the response with data, then at some point the server will end connection and respond by 413 Request Entity Too Large depending on what the limit is set.
Node.js has single threaded architecture with a max memory limitation of around 1.7 GB. If you set your above server limits to too high and have many incoming connections you will get process out of memory error.
So with appropriate limits it will either give timeout or be request too large. (And there are no other errors in your program.)
Update
You need to use drain event. The http response is a writable stream. It has its own internal buffer. When the buffer is emptied the drain event is triggered. You should learn more about streams as you would go in deeper. This will help you not just in http. You can find several resources about streams on web.
I have a server that uses socket.io and I need a way of throttling a client that is sending the server data too quickly. The server exposes both a TCP interface and a socket.io interface - with the TCP server (from the net module) I can use socket.pause() and socket.resume(), and this effectively throttles the client. But with socket.io's socket class there are no pause() and resume() methods.
What would be the easiest way of getting feedback to a client that it is overwhelming the server and needs to slow down? I liked socket.pause() and socket.resume() because it didn't require any additional code on the client-side - backup the TCP socket and things naturally slow down. Any equivalent for socket.io?
Update: I provide an API to interact with the server (there is currently a python version which runs over TCP and a JavaScript version which uses socket.io). So I don't have any real control over what the client does. Which is why using socket.pause() and socket.resume() is so great - backing up the TCP stream slows the python client down no matter what it tries to do. I'm looking for an equivalent for a JavaScript client.
With enough digging I found this:
this.manager.transports[this.id].socket.pause();
and
this.manager.transports[this.id].socket.resume();
Granted this probably won't work if the socket.io connection isn't a web sockets connection, and may break in a future update, but for now I'm going to go with it. When I get some time in the future I'll probably change it to the QUOTA_EXCEEDED solution that Pascal proposed.
Here is a dirty way to achieve throttling. Although this is a old post; some people may benefit from it:
First register a middleware:
io.on("connection", function (socket) {
socket.use(function (packet, next) {
if (throttler.canBeServed(socket, packet)) {
next();
}
});
//You other code ..
});
canBeServed is a simple throttler as seen below:
function canBeServed(socket, packet) {
if (socket.markedForDisconnect) {
return false;
}
var previous = socket.lastAccess;
var now = Date.now();
if (previous) {
var diff = now - previous;
//Check diff and disconnect if needed.
if (diff < 50) {
socket.markedForDisconnect = true;
setTimeout(function () {
socket.disconnect(true);
}, 1000);
return false;
}
}
socket.lastAccess = now;
return true;
}
You can use process.hrtime() instead of Date.time().
If you have a callback on your server somewhere which normally sends back the response to your client, you could try and change it like this:
before:
var respond = function (res, callback) {
res.send(data);
};
after
var respond = function (res, callback) {
setTimeout(function(){
res.send(data);
}, 500); // or whatever delay you want.
};
Looks like you should slow down your clients. If one client can send too fast for your server to keep up, this is not going to go very well with 100s of clients.
One way to do this would be have the client wait for the reply for each emit before emitting anything else. This way the server can control how fast the client can send by only answering when ready for example, or only answer after a set time.
If this is not enough, when a client exceeded x requests per second, start replying with something like QUOTA_EXCEEDED error, and ignore the data they send in. This will force external developers to make their app behave as you want them to do.
As another suggestion, I would propose a solution like this:
It is common for MySQL to get a large amount of requests which would take longer time to apply than the rate the requests coming in.
The server can record the requests in a table in db assuming this action is fast enough for the rate the requests are coming in and then process the queue at a normal rate for the server to sustain. This buffer system will allow the server to run slow but still process all the requests.
But if you want something sequential, then the request callback should be verified before the client can send another request. In this case, there should be a server ready flag. If the client is sending request while the flag is still red, then there can be a message telling the client to slow down.
simply wrap your client emitter into a function like below
let emit_live_users = throttle(function () {
socket.emit("event", "some_data");
}, 2000);
using use a throttle function like below
function throttle(fn, threshold) {
threshold = threshold || 250;
var last, deferTimer;
return function() {
var now = +new Date, args = arguments;
if(last && now < last + threshold) {
clearTimeout(deferTimer);
deferTimer = setTimeout(function() {
last = now;
fn.apply(this, args);
}, threshold);
} else {
last = now;
fn.apply(this, args);
}
}
}
I was using zeroMQ in nodeJS. But it seems that while sending the data from producer to worker, if I do not put it in setInterval, then it does not send the data to the worker. My example code is as follows:
producer.js
===========
var zmq = require('zmq')
, sock = zmq.socket('push');
sock.bindSync('tcp://127.0.0.1:3000');
console.log('Producer bound to port 3000');
//sock.send("hello");
var i = 0;
//1. var timer = setInterval(function() {
var str = "hello";
console.log('sending work', str, i++);
sock.send(str);
//2. clearTimeout(timer);
//3. }, 150);
sock.on('message', function(msg) {
console.log("Got A message, [%s], [%s]", msg);
});
So in the above code, if I add back the lines commented in 1, 2 and 3, then I do receive the message to the worker side, else it does not work.
Can anyone throw light why to send message I need to put it in setInterval? Or am I doing something wrong way?
The problem is hidden in the zmq bindings for node.js . I've just spent some time digging into it and it basically does this on send():
Enqueue the message
Flush buffers
Now the problem is in the flushing part, because it does
Check if the output socket is ready, otherwise return
Flush the enqueued messages
In your code, because you call bind and immediately send, there is no worker connected at the moment of the call, because they simply didn't have enough time to notice. So the message is enqueued and we are waiting for some workers to appear. Now the interesting part - where do we check for new workers? In the send function itself! So unless we call send() later, when there are actually some workers connected, our messages are never flushed and they are enqueued forever. And that is why setInterval works, because workers have enough time to notice and connect and you periodically check if there are any.
You can find the interesting part at https://github.com/JustinTulloss/zeromq.node/blob/master/lib/index.js#L277 .
Cheers ;-)
I am creating a node application that will send UDP packets to another machine. Everything appears to work fine when packets are sent about 100/second. When that number gets higher 500/second the packets stop sending. I don't think they are being droped as Wireshark does not show them leaving my computer.
const dgram = require("dgram");
var sent = 0;
var server = dgram.createSocket("udp4");
function sendCommand(text){
// Put command into a buffer
var buffer = new Buffer(text);
// Send the command
server.send(buffer, 0, buffer.length, 12345, 19.5.6.45, (err) => {
sent++;
});
}
The sendCommand() function is what is called internally. Like I said at 100 calls per second no problem. When it gets higher it just stops working.
The "sent" var stops incrementing so this leads me to think node dgram is faulty and server.send() is not firing correctly. It doesn't seem to recover unless I restart the program.
This is my first time posting on Stack Overflow, I apologise if I did anything wrong.
Edit:
Here is where the function is firing from.
// Loop through the channels
for (var i = 0; i < ids.length; i++) {
// Check if the channel is locked
if (!toBool(data.locks[i])) {
// Send the UDP command
sendCommand(ids[i]);
}
}