I have a chat app built in node.js. On the first message between two clients, one of the clients will spontaneously reload. After the reload, I can reconnect to the server, and all is well - I can continue the chat.
I'm really not sure how to troubleshoot this, or what I should be looking for.
There's only one strange thing I've noted.
The user sockets are stored on the server by username. I've told the server to write *username* has connected, or *username* has disconnected The strange thing is that I get multiple logs of undefined has disconnected, and then one *username* has disconnected
Thanks for anything to point me in the right direction
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I'm using node.js, websockets/ws.
In my site sometimes a random client loses connection without losing connection to other internet stuff. Less then a second later they connect back, with a new socket. (There is a code that calls socket.onClose, which tries to reconnect back to server)
On the server side I can't see or log anything wrong. Everything looks like a normal disconnect, same as closing the browser tab.
I am guessing the reason is either socket related or client related but I don't know where to begin to debug this problem.
I got ping/pong responses with 60 second timer, this isn't it. The user usually loses connection while active.
How can I debug this problem and find the reason?
I keep all the session info, data, within the socket and that is why I do not want people to lose their connection.
Thanks
I'm building MEAN application with socket.io. When page is just loaded, socket connection is established and kept live while user navigates to various pages, thanks to single-page nature of the app.
The user information is available in my socket connection thanks to passport.socketio.
However, when user logs in or out, I want the connection to be re-initialized, since otherwise socket will contain obsolete data about the user. Currently, I tried to implement it in this way: when user logs in / out, server disconnects this particular client's socket by calling socket.disconnect();.
On the client side, I listen for disconnect event, and try to re-establish the connection, like this:
_socket.on('disconnect', function(reason) {
_socket.connect();
});
Ok, now, when user logs out or in, server disconnects the client, this client connects back, and user information in the socket is up-to date. So far, so good.
But, consider different case when connection is broken: server is restarted. Previously, it "just worked": when I stop my server, connection is broken, but when I start server again, connection is automatically re-established. But after I've added my _socket.connect(); call, it doesn't work anymore: connection is still down until I refresh the page in the browser.
I've checked that when server calls disconnect();, the reason given to disconnect handler is: io server disconnect. And when server stops, the reason is: transport close.
Ok, then, I've implemented my disconnect handler as follows:
_socket.on('disconnect', function(reason) {
if (reason === 'transport close'){
// don't do anything special
} else {
_socket.connect();
}
});
Now it works. But, all of it seems as absolute dirty hack. At the very least, the reasons given (io server disconnect and transport close) seem to be just human-readable strings, so they might change in the future, and this will cause my code to stop working. And, well, there should be better way to do this; I must miss something essential, but unfortunately I can't find any good documentation on socket.io.
So, the question is: what is the correct way for the server to reconnect some particular client?
Additionally, if you have any recommendations on resources to learn about socket.io, I'd appreciate it very much as well.
I have a production app that uses socket.io (node.js back-end)to distribute messages to all the logged in clients. Many of my users are experiencing disconnections from the socket.io server. The normal use case for a client is to keep the web app open the entire working day. Most of the time on the app in a work day time is spent idle, but the app is still open - until the socket.io connection is lost and then the app kicks them out.
Is there any way I can make the connection more reliable so my users are not constantly losing their connection to the socket.io server?
It appears that all we can do here is give you some debugging advice so that you might learn more about what is causing the problem. So, here's a list of things to look into.
Make sure that socket.io is configured for automatic reconnect. In the latest versions of socket.io, auto-reconnect defaults to on, but you may need to verify that no piece of code is turning it off.
Make sure the client is not going to sleep such that all network connections will become inactive get disconnected.
In a working client (before it has disconnected), use the Chrome debugger, Network tab, webSockets sub-tab to verify that you can see regular ping messages going between client and server. You will have to open the debug window, get to the network tab and then refresh your web page with that debug window open to start to see the network activity. You should see a funky looking URL that has ?EIO=3&transport=websocket&sid=xxxxxxxxxxxx in it. Click on that. Then click on the "Frames" sub-tag. At that point, you can watch individual websocket packets being sent. You should see tiny packets with length 1 every once in a while (these are the ping and pong keep-alive packets). There's a sample screen shot below that shows what you're looking for. If you aren't seeing these keep-alive packets, then you need to resolve why they aren't there (likely some socket.io configuration or version issue).
Since you mentioned that you can reproduce the situation, one thing you want to know is how is the socket getting closed (client-end initiated or server-end initiated). One way to gather info on this is to install a network analyzer on your client so you can literally watch every packet that goes over the network to/from your client. There are many different analyzers and many are free. I personally have used Fiddler, but I regularly hear people talking about WireShark. What you want to see is exactly what happens on the network when the client loses its connection. Does the client decide to send a close socket packet? Does the client receive a close socket packet from someone? What happens on the network at the time the connection is lost.
webSocket network view in Chrome Debugger
The most likely cause is one end closing a WebSocket due to inactivity. This is commonly done by load balancers, but there may be other culprits. The fix for this is to simply send a message every so often (I use 30 seconds, but depending on the issue you may be able to go higher) to every client. This will prevent it from appearing to be inactive and thus getting closed.
I have a web based multiplayer game. It happens from time to time that someone is kicked out because server did not get expected message from client. It seems from my logs that client did not disconnect, just did not send message or server did not receive it. My question here is "Does this things happen normally from time to time?" Should i use some kind of callback mechanism to ensure message is delivered and if not send it again or is there some issue that i am not aware?
socket.io already provides ACKs and message ID tracking, on top of TCP.
Also, socket.io uses pings to check the connection. So, if you say that the client is not disconnected, and the server tells that the client is not disconnected, then the connection is still there.
The problem must be situated elsewhere.
Are you sure there is not a bug in either part of the implementation? Showing some code snippets could help, as well as the environment you are using.
So I am developing (more playing around with) a realtime game in node.js, I am also using Redis and Sockets.io. I have players create a lobby and join it (kind of like a pre-game chat room, where you can talk to players and select game settings) . The client is written in HTML/CSS/JS, Anyway I want to be able to tell when players disconnect from the lobby, to update the number of players joined on the interface (and joined player names).
Two options I have thought about are:
Using redis' key value timeout feature, to remove a particular field if it is not updated in x amount of time. I would then have the host check the existance of this field to check for DC's. I do wonder if this is highly inefficient, as many users potentially will be playing, so will it be bad to have many timeout values in redis and also many other users polling these fields.
I could use the sockets.io on('disconnect', ..) to update the field. However I am not sure if this event will fire if for example a users pc freezes?
Anyway I am open to any other ideas also!
Socket.io have a 'heartbeat' to check connection still alive. Default heartbeat timeout is 15s. You can read more about configuring it in this wiki. If heartbeat fails (user pc freezes) then socket.io will emit 'disconnect' event.
Socket.io should suffice. You can configure it to use heartbeats to ping the socket and check its health. If a user's computer freezes it will, in effect, not be able to respond to these heartbeats, causing it to force a disconnect.
To test this you could set up your Socket.io to use heartbeats, then connect via a browser onn a different computer. While in the browser past into the console an infinite loop. Causing it to simulate a freeze.