I'm using Socket.IO to attempt to transfer information from one domain to another... is that possible?
I want to send data upon a POST request to one domain to another domain...
I have a successful connection on the receiving end, but am having trouble with the sending end. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Yes. According to socketio documentation, it is possible to make cross domain connections irrespective of the browser.
[http://automattic.github.io/socket.io/#faq]
You can directly connect to the server ( sending end ) from the client via io.connect and there is nothing special you have to do in the server side code.
This link may be helpful in handling POST requests. http://showmetheco.de/articles/2011/8/socket-io-for-backend-developers.html
Also, it would be really nice if you can post what kind of issue you are running in to in the sending side.
Related
I wonder how do I use socket.io properly with my express app.
I have a REST API written in express/node.js and I want to use socket.io to add real-time feature for my app. Consider that I want to do something I can do just by sending a request to my REST API. What should I do with socket.io? Should I send request to the REST API and send socket.io client the result of the process or handle the whole process within socket.io emitter and then send the result to socket.io client?
Thanks in advance.
Question is not that clear but from what I'm getting from it, is that you want to know what you would use it for that you cant already do with your current API?
The short answer is, well nothing really.. Websockets are just the natural progression of API's and the need for a more 'real-time' interface between systems.
Old methods (and still used and relevant for the right use case) is long polling where you keep checking back to the server for updated items and if so grab them.. This works but it can be expensive in terms of establishing a connection, performing a lookup, then closing a connection.
websockets keep that connection open, allowing both the client and server to communicate real time. So for example, lets say you make an update to your backend data and want users to get that update, using long polling you would rely on each client to ping back to the server, check if there is an update and if so grab it. This can cause lags between updates, some users have updated data while other do not etc.
Now, take the same scenario with websockets, you make an update to the backend data, hit submit, this then emits to your socket server. Socket server takes the call, performs the task ( grabs updated data ) and emits it to the users, each connected user instantly gets that update.
Socket servers are typically used for things like real time chats or polling where packets are smaller but they are also used for web games etc. Depending on the size of your payloads will determine how best to send data back and forth because the larger the payload the more resources / bandwidth it will take on the socket server so its something to consider.
I've got an chatbot app where I want to send one message e.g. res.json("Hello") from express, then another message later e.g. res.json("How are you doing"), but want to process some code between the two.
My code seems to have some problems with this, because when I delete the first res.json() then the second one works fine and doesn't cause any problems.
Looking in my heroku logs, I get lots of gobbledy gook response from the server, with an IncomingMessage = {}, containing readableState and Server objects when I include both of these res.json() functions.
Any help would be much appreciated.
HTTP is request/response. Client sends a request, server sends ONE response. Your first res.json() is your ONE response. You can't send another response to that same request. If it's just a matter of collecting all the data before sending the one response, you can rethink your code to collect all the data before sending the one response.
But, what you appear to be looking for is "server push" where the server can send data to the client continually whenever it wants to. The usual solution for that is a webSocket connection (or socket.io which is built on top of webSocket and adds more features).
In the webSocket/socket.io architecture, the client makes a connection the server and the connection is kept open indefinitely. Then either side of the connection can send messages to the other end. This is most useful when the server wants to "push" data to the client at any time. In this case, the client establishes the connection, then the server can send data to the client over that connection at any time. The client registers a listener for incoming messages and will be notified anytime the server sends it some data.
Both webSocket and socket.io are fully supported in modern browsers and in node.js. I would personally recommend using socket.io because some of the features it adds (a messaging layer, auto-reconnect, etc...) are very useful.
To use a continuously connected socket like this, you will have to make sure your hosting infrastructure is properly configured to allow it.
res.json() always sends the response to the client immediately (calling it again will cause an error). If you need to gradually build up a response then you can progressively decorate a plain old javascript object; for example, appending items to an array. When you are done call res.json() with the constructed response.
But you should post your code so we can see what's happening.
I want to add on an existing project some sockets with nodeJs and Socket.io.
I already have 2 servers :
An API RESTful web service, to storage and manage my datas.
A Public web service to return HTML, assets (js, css, images, ...)
On the first try, I create my socket server on the Public one. But I think it will be better if I create an other one to handle only socket query.
What do you think ? It's a good idea or just an useless who will add more problem than solve (maybe duplicate intern lib, ..)
Also, i'm using token to communicate between Public and API, do I have to create another to communication between socket and API ? Or I can use the same one ?
------[EDIT]------
As nobody didn't understand me well I have create a schema with the infrastructure I was thinking about.
It is a good way to proceed ?
The Public Server and Socket server have to be the same ? Or can be separate ?
Do I must create a socket connection between API and Socket server for each client connected ?
Thank you !
Thanks for explaining better.
First of all, while this seems reasonable, this way of using Socket.io is not the most common one. The biggest advantage of using Socket.io is that it keeps a channel open for 2-way communication. The main advantage of this is that the server itself can send messages to the client without the latter having to poll periodically.
Think, for example, of a mail client. Without sockets, the browser would have to poll periodically to check for new mail. With an open socket connection, instead, as soon as a new mail comes the server notifies the client immediately.
In your case, the benefits could be limited, and I'm not sure the additional complexity of a Socket.io server (and cost!) would really be worth the modest speed improvement on REST requests. However, at the end it's up to you.
In answer to your points
See above
If the "public server" is not written in Node.js they can't be the same application. Wether they reside on the same server, it's up to you and your budget. Ideally they should be separate, for bigger workloads.
If you just want the socket server to act as a real-time proxy, then yes, you'll have to create a socket connection for each request. How that will work is:
The client requests a resource to the Socket.io server.
The Socket.io server does the normal HTTP request to the API server (e.g. using request)
The response is returned to the client over the socket connection
The workflow represented in #3 is the reason why you should expect only moderate performance improvement. Indeed, you'll get some better latency, but most of the overhead for starting a HTTP request is still there!
I'm currently working with the BugHerd API.
Please suggest how to create webhooks. I have google understand they are new functionality in apis and they used for two way communication.
They're a way of asking a remote server to make a request of your own server when events happen on the remote server. They allow you to receive real-time events without constantly polling the server. They're basically callbacks that happen between two severs over HTTP.
As for creating them, the API is pretty clear. Make a post request to POST /api_v2/webhooks.json and include JSON in the following format:
{
"project_id":1,
"target_url":"https://app.example.com/api/bugherd_sync/project/1/task_create",
"event":"task_create"
}
You're telling it which event to hook into, and which URL their server should contact when the event occurs.
Do I need to use a websocket to send JSON data to my client? (it's a tiny session description)
Currently my client-side code sends a session description via XHR to my Node.js server. After receipt, my node server needs to send this down to the other client in the 'room'.
I can achieve this using socket.io, but is it possible to do anything a bit faster/ more secure, like XHR for example?
If you just want to receive the offer from the other side and nothing else, I would suggest you to try HTML5 Server Sent Events.
But this may bring problems due to different browsers support, so I would use a simple long pooling request. Since you only want to get the SDP offer, the implementation is pretty simple.
No, you don't need to use the WebSocket API to send JSON data from client to client via a server, but unless you use Google's proprietary App Engine Channel APIs, then the WebSocket API is probably your best choice.
Also, please keep in mind that you're not only sending session descriptions, but also candidate info (multiple times) as well as other arbitrary data that you might need to start/close sessions, etc.
As far as I know, the WebSocket API is the fastest solution (faster than XHR) for signalling because all the overhead involved with multiple HTTP requests is non-existent after the initial handshake.
If you want to code things yourself, I'd start reading the latest WebSocket draft and learning how to code the WebSocket server-side script yourself or else you will pretty much have to rely on a WebSocket library like Socket.IO or a proprietary solution like Google's App Engine Channel APIs.
How about using the 303 HTTP status code?
The first client send the session description to resource X, the server acknowledges the receipt and responds with a 303 status code that points to a newly created resource Y that accumulates other clients session descriptions.
The first client polls resource X until it changes.
The second client send its session description to resource A, the server acknowledges the receipt and updates resource Y. The first client notices the update with the next poll and will now have the second client's session information.