to many this may be an easy question but I'm trying to figure out the reason/logistics as to how socketIO handles variables. In the following code, x is set to 0, every second it counts up. Now if you had 1000 clients connected, every time the connect would each client get a new count starting at 0 and not affect every other connected client?
Also, is there a way to emit a new number to ever connected client instead of each connected client? Thanks!
io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
x= 0;
var socketSend = setInterval(function(){
x = x+1;
socket.emit('count', { number: x });
}, 1000);
});
the socketSend is visible only to inside the callback of connection event, so every time a client connects the callback is called, passing along the socket object, so every client will get 0 as a start and the count will begin.
Related
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.
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var server = app.listen(3000);
var replyFromBot;
app.use(express.static('public'));
var socket = require('socket.io');
var io = socket(server);
io.sockets.on('connection' , newConnection);
function newConnection(socket) {
console.log(socket.id);
listen = true;
socket.on('Quest' ,reply);
function reply(data) {
replyFromBot = bot.reply("local-user", data);
console.log(socket.id+ " "+replyFromBot);
socket.emit('Ans' , replyFromBot);
}
}
i've created a server based chat-bot application using node.js socket.io and express but the thing is for first time when i call socket.on it gets executed once and for 2nd time it gets executed twice for 3rd thrice and so on i've tackled this issue by setting a flag on my client so that it would display only once. i just wants to know is my code logically correct i mean is this a good code? because if the client ask a question for 10th time than listeners array will have 10+9+8....+1 listeners it would go on increasing depending upon number of questions clients asked. which is not good
i tried using removeListener it just removes listener once and it dosent call back for 2nd time. what do you guys recommend? do i go with this or is there any other way to add the listener when socket.on called and remove it when it gets executed and again add listener for the next time it gets called
thank-you.
client code:
function reply() {
socket.emit('Quest' , Quest);
flag = true;
audio.play();
socket.on('Ans', function(replyFromBot) {
if(flag) {
console.log("hi");
var para = document.createElement("p2");
x = document.getElementById("MiddleBox");
para.appendChild(document.createTextNode(replyFromBot));
x.appendChild(para);
x.scrollTop = x.scrollHeight;
flag = false;
}
});
}
The problem is caused by your client code. Each time you call the reply() function in the client you set up an additional socket.on('Ans', ...) event handler which means they accumulate. You can change that to socket.once() and it will remove itself each time after it get the Ans message. You can then also remove your flag variable.
function reply() {
socket.emit('Quest' , Quest);
audio.play();
// change this to .once()
socket.once('Ans', function(replyFromBot) {
console.log("hi");
var para = document.createElement("p2");
x = document.getElementById("MiddleBox");
para.appendChild(document.createTextNode(replyFromBot));
x.appendChild(para);
x.scrollTop = x.scrollHeight;
});
}
Socket.io is not really built as a request/response system which is what you are trying to use it as. An even better way to implement this would be to use the ack capability that socket.io has so you can get a direct response back to your Quest message you send.
You also need to fix your shared variables replyFromBot and listen on your server because those are concurrency problems waiting to happen as soon as you have multiple users using your server.
Better Solution
A better solution would be to use the ack capability that socket.io has to get a direct response to a message you sent. To do that, you'd change your server to this:
function newConnection(socket) {
console.log(socket.id);
socket.on('Quest', function(data, fn) {
let replyFromBot = bot.reply("local-user", data);
console.log(socket.id+ " "+replyFromBot);
// send ack response
fn(replyFromBot);
});
}
And, change your client code to this:
function reply() {
audio.play();
socket.emit('Quest', Quest, function(replyFromBot) {
console.log("hi");
var para = document.createElement("p2");
x = document.getElementById("MiddleBox");
para.appendChild(document.createTextNode(replyFromBot));
x.appendChild(para);
x.scrollTop = x.scrollHeight;
});
}
Doing it this way, you're hooking into a direct reply from the message so it works as request/response much better than the way you were doing it.
Instead of socket.on('Quest' ,reply); try socket.once('Quest' ,reply);
The bug in your code is that each time newConnection() is called node registers a event listener 'Quest'. So first time newConnection() is called the number of event listener with event 'Quest' is one, the second time function is called, number of event listener increases to two and so on
socket.once() ensures that number of event listener bound to socket with event 'Quest' registered is exactly one
server.js
io.on('connection', function (socket) {
var addedUser = false;
socket.on('setTimer', function(data) {
timer.setEndTime(data.time);
socket.broadcast.emit('currentEndTime', {time: timer.getEndTime() });
});
});
client.js
$(function() {
var timer = new Timer(),
socket = io.connect('http://localhost:3000');
socket.on('currentEndTime', function (data) {
//this is the full date time in ms.
timer.setEndTimeFromServer(data.time);
});
set = setInterval(function(){
$('.time').trigger('click');
clearInterval(set);
},100);
$('.time').on('click', function(e) {
e.stopPropagation();
var time = $(this).text() * 1000;
timer.setEndTime(time);
timer.timeRemaining();
socket.emit('setTimer', { time: time });
});
});
Hi there, i am trying to integrate countdown timer for node js/socket io application. Timer works fine, but how do i avoid timer reset on new socket connection/page refresh. Thank You
This is because of two things:
Your socket goes away when you hit the refresh button and a new one is created and thus your connection to the server (and hence the timer value) goes away when you hit the refresh button.
When you load the page first, you don't get the current value of the timer and print it on your page to start everything.
You can have each individual timer stored in a key value storage. You can use the IP Address as key and timer value as value or something like that. This way, you can retrieve the current value of the timer for the user when user connects to the server and continue counting down.
If you use the socket ID as key, it will do you no good except to pointlessly populate a key value storage and spike up your memory usage. Use something more persistent, such as IP Address, username, e-mail or something of that sort as key and current value of timer as value.
Also, your current solution is flawed because it faces the "refresh lag". When you hit the refresh button, you stop counting for the amount of time that is spent on re-rendering of your web page. If it's nothing more than a handful of milliseconds, you're fine; but as long as it goes to a few hundreds of milliseconds, this will make actual difference. Do the count down at the server side. Just notify the client at the set intervals. This will increase the server workload, but at least you're not bound to having bad timers.
If you're going to have a single countdown, like "x days, x hours, x minutes, x seconds remaining to Superbowl or some other big event", you're much better off without socket.io. Just send the timestamp to the big event to the client and do the remainder on the client side.
Right part of my code is
io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket){
var interval = setInterval(function() {
repaintGraph()
socket.emit('set data chart', '{"series":[['+series+']]}');
}, 1000 );
The chart in this case, if I have 3 users connected, the chart updates 3 times in one second I need to execute the code 1 time in 1 second, regardless of the number of clients
You can run the interval code outside of the connection code:
setInterval(function() {
repaintGraph();
io.emit('set data chart', '{"series":[['+series+']]}');
}, 1000);
io.on('connection', function() {
...
});
io.emit() will broadcast the message to all connected clients, every second.
There's a little bit of an inefficiency in the code, in that it will call repaintGraph() every second even if there aren't any clients connected, but it makes the code much easier.
try to use
socket.broadcast.emit('event',data)
I know socket.io has a built in feature for reconnecting and everything, however I don't think that it is working - as I have seen from others it's also not working for them either.
If a user puts their computer to sleep, it disconnects them, and then when they open it back up they are no longer connected so they don't any of the notifications or anything until they refresh the page. Perhaps it's just something that I'm not doing correctly?
var io = require('socket.io').listen(8080);
var users = {};
////////////////USER CONNECTED/////
console.log("Sever is now running");
io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
//Tell the client that they are connected
socket.emit('connected');
//Once the users session is recieved
socket.on('session', function (session) {
//Add users to users variable
users[socket.id] = {userID:session, socketID:socket};
//When user disconnects
socket.on('disconnect', function () {
//socket.socket.connect();
var count= 0;
for(var key in users){
if(users[key].userID==session)++count;
if(count== 2) break;
}
if(count== 1){
socket.broadcast.emit('disconnect', { data : session});
}
//Remove users session id from users variable
delete users[socket.id];
});
socket.on('error', function (err) {
//socket.socket.connect();
});
socket.emit("connection") needs to be called when the user reconnects, or at least the events that happen in that event need to be called.
Also socket.socket.connect(); doesn't work, it returns with an error and it shuts the socket server down with an error of "connect doesn't exist".
The problem is related to io.connect params.
Look at this client code (it will try to reconnect forever, with max delay between attempts 3sec):
ioParams = {'reconnection limit': 3000, 'max reconnection attempts': Number.MAX_VALUE, 'connect timeout':7000}
socketAddress = null
socket = io.connect(socketAddress, ioParams)
There are two important parameters out there, related to your problem:
reconnection limit - limit the upper time of delay between reconnect attemts. Normally it's getting bigger and bigger in time of server outage
max reconnection attempts - how many times you want to try. Default is 10. In most cases this is the problem why the client stops trying.