Detecting Socket.IO message delivery error on client side - node.js

We need to update the client side UI to indicate that a message fails to deliver. How do I have Socket.IO JS client call a custom callback directly when the message fails to deliver? For example, something like:
socket.emit("event", data).onError(myCallback);
I know Socket.IO provides the Ack mechanism to confirm delivery success. Therefore, one can set up a timer with a handler which calls the failure callback, if the ack is not called after a certain amount of time. But this doesn't seem to be the best way to do.
Also there is the error event provided by Socket.IO, but it doesn't come with info regarding which emit caused the error.

Unfortunately there's no way to get errors from callbacks, the only way is to indeed create your own timeout:
var timeoutId = setTimeout(timeoutErrorFn, 500);
var acknCallbackFn = function(err, userData){
clearTimeout(timeoutId)
//manage UserData
}
socket.emit('getUserData', acknCallbackFn);
Source of the code
And there's another issue about this, open
So for the time being you have to stick with your manual setTimeout.

Related

Handle message before event ws nodejs

I'm using ws version 7.4.0 and I would want to display a console log or perfom operations between the moment where the client is sending a message to the server and before the server fire the on event message.
To represent it:
webserver.on('example', function callback(msg){console.log(msg);}); //act before the call of callback
client------server---[here]---callback
The only way I see right now would be to use a "root" function before the callback of all my events like this:
function callback(msg){console.log(msg);}
webserver.on('example', function root(msg) {console.log('example msg'); callback(msg);});
I don't know if this is a real and/or good solution I really wish to write a clean and organized application.
If someone could give me some advise or a real solution? Thank you.
You could make a wrapper for all of your callbacks like so:
function makeCallback(fn) {
return function(msg) {
if (!environment.prod) console.log(msg);
fn(msg)
};
}
var myCallback = makeCallback(function (msg) {
// something
});
webserver.on('example', myCallback);
Or I think the better solution is to stream the requets into your stdout although I don't know the implications of using this method.
And I want to address the naming of your websocket server. Even though a web socket server is technically a web server, it only responds to the websocket protocol and naming it webserver could be misleading, I would recommend using the naming like in their documents wss.

Why isn't my simple socket.io event system working?

I am running into a problem while using socket.io to do some event handling. For some reason, the following code snippet does not handle the event 'update', or any event for that matter. Let me explain the situation.
I have created a file named updates.js to create a socket.io socket variable named socket_8888 that is bound to port 8888. I then use module.exports to make that socket variable available to any other file that imports updates.js using require('updates.js'). I structured my application this way because I need to emit events from several different files.
In app.js:
var updates = require('updates.js');
setTimeout(function() {
updates.regular.on("update", function () {
console.log("Updated.");
})
}, 1000);
setTimeout(
function () {
console.log(updates.regular.eventNames()); // Verifying that there is actually a listener bound to the socket -> prints ['update']
updates.regular.emit("update", 100)
}, 1500);
In updates.js:
var io = require("socket.io");
var socket_8888 = io(8888);
var updates = {
regular: socket_8888
};
module.exports = updates;
However, a few simple tests have uncovered that events are not being handled, and I really cannot figure out why. The word "Updated" should print a second and a half after I run the application using "node www", but it does not.
The reason I started doing this simple testing was because I am trying to revive an old website of mine, but after a couple years, API updates have rendered a lot of my code useless. So I am trying to rebuild. I am not trying to send events between different files on the server. I am only testing the events locally because the events were not firing to the browser client. For this reason, I decided to investigate using this simple test, and it turns out the events can not even be emitted/listened to on the actual server, let alone be handled on a client that is on a whole different network.
I have already verified that the listener is actually binding to the socket. However, I do not know how to check whether or not the socket is actually emitting the event "update".
I have written the listener to bind only after one second because attempting to bind the moment the application starts does not give Express enough time to set everything up. Otherwise, the socket would still be undefined.
I do not get any error messages. The code just does not work as I expected.
I would really appreciate it if the community can tell me why the event 'update' is not being handled.
To include update module (update.js)
Try this
It work's Perfectly
module.exports = updates
var updates = require('./updates');

What is the "right" way to deal with EPIPE and other socket errors in Node.js?

The only way I have found to "catch" EPIPE errors thrown asynchronously by a socket timing out or closing prematurely is to directly attach an event handler to the socket object itself, as demonstrated in the documentation here:
https://nodejs.org/api/errors.html
const net = require('net');
const connection = net.connect('localhost');
// Adding an 'error' event handler to a stream:
connection.on('error', (err) => {
// If the connection is reset by the server, or if it can't
// connect at all, or on any sort of error encountered by
// the connection, the error will be sent here.
console.error(err);
});
This works, but is in many cases unhelpful -- if you're accessing a database or another service that has a node driver, the request and socket objects are likely inaccessible from your app code.
The most obvious solution is "don't do things that generate these errors" but since any non-trivial application is dependent on other services, no amount of input-checking in advance can guarantee that the service on the other end won't hang up unexpectedly, throwing an EPIPE in your code and in all likelihood crashing Node.
So, the options for handling this situation seem to be:
Let the error crash your app and use nodemon or supervisor to automatically restart. This isn't clean, but it seems like the only way to really guarantee you'll get back up and running safely.
Write custom connection clients for dependent services. This let's you attach error handlers where known problems could occur. But it violates DRY and means that you're now on the hook for maintaining your own custom client code when otherwise reasonable open source solutions already exist. Basically, it adds a huge maintenance burden for a slightly cleaner solution to a fairly rare problem.
Am I missing something, or are those the best options available?

NodeJS ZeroMQ , no callback for send?

I have multiple nodejs servers located at different locations and i need to create a IPC over tcp sockets and i am using ZeroMQ for that . I need something like request/response or pub/sub in a async way with affirmation that message is sent , but seeing the node-zeromq modules i found all the send methods are synchronous and there is no way to confirm the message the sent through a callback
In short ,
I need something like socket.send(message,function(err,res){;});
but i found this socket.send(message)
Anyone knows how to do this using ZeroMQ or any other way i could IPC reliablly and with a affirmation as response ?
UPDATE : Ive found https://github.com/visionmedia/axon , Axon and its req/rep send method has a callback , would be great if anyone can shed more light about this .Suggestions ?
You could use the request/reply pattern instead of the pub/sub pattern with ZMQ. I believe when you make a request, there is a callback to listen for the response, as opposed to pub.send()...
zeromq.node does yet not support reply callbacks for the send message.
There is an issue discussed for several years now on GitHub where people argue that it would be a sensible modification.
I followed the suggestion on another question since I would really like to use Promises in the higher levels and therefore need callbacks for the REQ/REP mechanism. I.e. the callback is invoked from the 'message' event handler:
var socket, onRepHandler, replyCallback, send;
socket = zmq.socket('req');
onRepHandler = function (reply) {
// HACK
// This handler is a workaround until zeromq.node supports
// direct callback for REQ/REP:
// https://github.com/JustinTulloss/zeromq.node/issues/48
if (replyCallback) {
replyCallback(reply);
}
replyCallback = undefined;
};
socket.on('message', onRepHandler(msg));
socket.connect(address);
// Send method with callback
send = function (msg, repcb) {
if (replyCallback) {
throw new Error('Cannot send request before receiving reply of preceding request!');
}
replyCallback = repcb;
socket.send(msg);
}
It feels like a questionable hack but I hope the zeromq.node library gets updated eventually.

node.js, faye (bayeux) - after subscribe event

I have a chat server. And after the clients subscribes I want to look in a DB to see if there is any history for the chat room they subscribed to.
The problem is, that I can only catch "subscribe" events in extension which must do "return callback(message);" to return the message. If I do the history thingy here nothing gets publishes to the clients because client isn't actually subscribed.
Is there any way to know when client ready? Or some event that happens on successfull subscription?
Thanks!
You can attach a callback after creating the subscription that will fire when you are successfully subscribed and another when you fail to subscribe:
var http = require('http');
var faye = require('faye');
var faye_server = new faye.NodeAdapter({mount: '/faye', timeout: 120});
faye_server.listen(8089);
var subscription = faye_server.getClient().subscribe('/testing', function(message){console.log(message);});
subscription.callback(function(){console.log('Subscription successful and ready to use!');});
subscription.errback(function(){console.log('ERROR: Subscription failed!');});
This is documented on the faye mainpage although it's buried a bit. . . http://faye.jcoglan.com/browser/subscribing.html
This works on a node server, node client, or browser client as I've tested it.
Furthermore, what I have been doing to make sure my clients are up and running is this: create client, then try to subscribe to garbage channel name. Once that subscription comes up, fails, or times out (put 5 second time out around it) I take that as my client open success. It's a bit of a round about method, but it's working very well for me and faye makes it pretty clean by using callback and errback just like in my previous example.
Now that's all on the client side, but it gets much easier on the server side: http://faye.jcoglan.com/node/monitoring.html. Just use the extensions here and look for subscribe events from specific clients and you are good to go.
Hope that helps

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