Socket.io Detect when client disconnects - node.js

I'm writing an application where I open up a socket when a user visits my site, record information by sending data over the socket while the user is on the site, and store the information in a database once the user leaves the site.
The problem I am currently facing is that while I can detect when a socket disconnects from my server, I don't know which socket corresponds to what information, so I don't know what information to store into the database.
Below is where I believe I need to put in code
socket.on('disconnect',function() {
//insert data corresponding to current socket into database
console.log('The client has disconnected!');
});
Thanks!

It sounds like you want to keep some kind of state associated with the socket connection. I think what you are looking for is socket.io sessions.
Plenty of examples around on the net, this thread has a lot of good information: socket.io and session?
I found this particularly usefull: http://www.danielbaulig.de/socket-ioexpress/

Related

How to avoid users see data from other user socket?

I have a dasboard that is making socket request every five seconds, sometimes, some users start getting data from other user socket request, but at the begging everything is working fine.
I have tried with sticky-session, diferrent socket instance, personalized socket event names.
if someone unsderstand my problem and i have a solution, i would be grateful.
Sockets are, by definition, separate from each other. I suspect the issue is that you're emitting to a namespace rather than to a particular socket.
io.of('someNamespace').emit('data');
vs
io.of('someNamespace').on('connection', (socket) => {
socket.emit('data');
});
In the first example we're sending data to all sockets in the namespace. In the second we're only sending data to a particular socket. The difference is in where you're emitting the data.

How to use socket.io-redis Nodejs

Good afternoon,
I have a chat application written with NodeJS, Express and socket.io, in that application there are no rooms, when a user connects the socket (connection of that user) is linked to his id in an object that stays in memory:
Users = {
'1': {socket},
'2': {socket},
...
}
This works great! When a user is going to send a message it informs the recipient's id the server retrieves the equivalent socket and sends the message.
My problem is that due to the number of users I will have to upload a new server with the application, the problem is that users on different servers can not communicate because each server knows only the list of users that is connected to it. After much reading I came to the conclusion that the best way to solve this is by using the Redis Adapter, I looked for examples on the internet exhaustively however they all use Rooms to send the messages or send the same message to all the user and I would like to send one Message to a specific user regardless of which server instance it is if possible without the need to create rooms, simply recovering its connection based on its id and sending the message, would like to know if someone could tell me if this is possible and how to implement.
Below is an image of how my architecture should look:

Socket.io: correct way for the server to reconnect the client

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.

Scaling express/node.js with socket.io horizontally with redis

I am trying to scale by express backend. The problem is that every time a user comes in or if I restart the server it gets a new socket.id. Plus I can't save the whole socket into memory because it gives me a [Circular JSON] problem. How do I save somepart of the socket into redis that will allow me retrieve the same socket from other servers?
You need to decouple the user from the socket.id. The socket.id is volatile and can change even with a browser refresh. Instead, when a user socket connects, take a look at the handshake data which is passed and use that to associate the socket to the user. As far as persisting socket data in redis, that can already be handled for you using socket.io-redis.
Take a look at this link for scaling out socket.io: http://socket.io/docs/using-multiple-nodes

How to send real time notification to single user using node.js and PHP

I am trying to integrate real time notifications with Node and socket.io in a Symfony Application. I have read a lot of information about this topic and have a working Node application.
nodeClient.js
var socket = io.connect( 'http://192.168.15.106:8080' );
$('a.sendSmile').click(function(){
socket.emit( 'message', { name: 'something' } );
});
socket.on('message', function(data){
console.log(data.name);
});
The problem now is with the above which is working perfectly I am able to send real time notification to all the users at once. But what's the best way to target a single user?
For example a user can send a smile to another user so only the second user should receive the notification and not all the users.
Should I make multiple listeners for node? or any other method to do this?
You need some way of identifying which socket that connected to your server is the one you want to send data to and then you can send to just that socket. You can keep track of user names when users connect or if you have some auth system, you can keep track of which socket belongs to which authenticated user.
Your server holds a list of connected sockets. Each connected one at a time and triggered a connection event on your server when they connected. Your application needs to create a way of knowing which of those connected sockets you want to send the data to. This is not something you've described anything about how you want that to work so we can't really help more specifically.
You can dispatch a notification to single user if you can discriminate that user. For example you can get a user_id on client connection to your nodejs server (the user_id is send from client, inside message) and save it in a key-value store (like Redis, memcache, ...). In this way you can correctly dispatch the notification, arrived from the server (like Symfony2 application), to right user.
I suggest you use Redis, both as a key-value store and for its implementation pattern of the publish/subscribe usable as a channel of communication between the server and the application of realtime.

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