HTML5 Websockets API Introduction and Tools

The WebSocket API is an advanced technology that makes it possible to open a two-way interactive communication session between the user's browser and a server. With this API, you can send messages to a server and receive event-driven responses without having to poll the server for a reply.

Note: While a WebSocket connection is functionally somewhat similar to standard Unix-style sockets, they are not related.

Interfaces

WebSocket

The primary interface for connecting to a WebSocket server and then sending and receiving data on the connection.

CloseEvent

The event sent by the WebSocket object when the connection closes.

MessageEvent

The event sent by the WebSocket object when a message is received from the server.

Guides

• Writing WebSocket client applications
• Writing WebSocket servers
• Writing a WebSocket server in C#
• Writing a WebSocket server in Java

Tools

• HumbleNet: A cross-platform networking library that works in the browser. It consists of a C wrapper around WebSockets and WebRTC that abstracts awaycross-browser differences, facilitating the creation of multi-user networking functionality for games and other apps.
• µWebSockets: Highly scalable WebSocket server and client implementation for C++11 and Node.js.
• ClusterWS:  Lightweight, fast and powerful framework for building scalable WebSocket applications in Node.js.
• CWS: Fast C++ WebSocket implementation for Node.js (uWebSockets v0.14 fork)
• Socket.IO: A long polling/WebSocket based third party transfer protocol for Node.js.
• SocketCluster: A pub/sub WebSocket framework for Node.js with a focus on scalability.
• WebSocket-Node: A WebSocket server API implementation for Node.js.
• Total.js: Web application framework for Node.js (Example: WebSocket chat)
• Faye: A WebSocket (two-ways connections) and EventSource (one-way connections) for Node.js Server and Client.
• SignalR: SignalR will use WebSockets under the covers when it's available, and
  gracefully fallback to other techniques and technologies when it isn't, while your application code stays the same.
• Caddy: A web server capable of proxying arbitrary commands (stdin/stdout) as a websocket.
• ws: a popular WebSocket client & server library for Node.js.
• jsonrpc-bidirectional: Asynchronous RPC which, on a single connection, may have functions exported on the server and, and the same time, on the client (client may call server, server may also call client).
• cowboy: Cowboy is a small, fast and modern HTTP server for Erlang/OTP with WebSocket support.

Related Topics

• AJAX
• JavaScript

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• RFC 6455 — The WebSocket Protocol
• WebSocket API Specification
• Server-Sent Events

Credits

• Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Websockets_API
• Published under Open CC Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 licence