TCP and WEB sockets - node.js

Question

I have http server and socket.io (listening this http server). Clients connect(via socket io) and get some information. Now I want to have clients connecting via tcp socket that will receive the same information as the clients on web socket. How to do it? Is it required to create a net server? And if so, then how information which come to http server send to tcp clients?

Answer 1

You need to create the TCP server so clients will be able to connect to it.
One solution can be using a messaging system (such as pub/sub with Redis, or a library like https://github.com/learnboost/kue) to notify the other server to send the data.
For example:
1) user connects to socket.io
2) user connects to TCP server
3) TCP server subscribes to listening to signals
4) socket.io emits data to the user and signals the TCP server to send the data as well
5) TCP server sends the data

Answer 2

in nodejs to start a tcp server:
var fs = require('fs');
var net = require('net');
var server = net.createServer(function(socket){ // create a tcp server
socket.on('data',function(data){ // on data event when data is set to the socket
var strRequestInfo = data.toString(); // get the string sent by the client
/*
here you could analyse the request data
and think what to do with it like return a certain file
*/
fs.readFile('/path/to/some/file.html', function (err, fileData) { // read a file
if (err) throw err;
socket.write(fileData); // write file content to tcp socket
});
/* -or- just write some text */
socket.write(new Buffer('some text'));
});
});
server.listen(8080, function() { // bind the server
console.log('TCP server bound');
});
you have to take in to consideration that socket.on('data') will not trigger when all the data is sent, it can trigger many time depending on the size of the data being sent.
Therefore the request data should be concatenated until the logic of your request decides to send a response back to the client.
You can add the sockets to an array if you would like to send data to all sockets:
var socketArray =[];
var server = net.createServer(function(socket){
socketArray.push(socket);
});
then you could iterate and send responses to all client:
for(var i=0;i<socketArray.length;i++)
socketArray[i].write(new Buffer('some data'));