In this chapter, you have learned about the basic principles of WebSocket applications and how to build them using the Ratchet framework. In contrast to most PHP applications, Ratchet apps are deployed as single, long-running PHP processes that do not require process managers such as FPM or web servers. This requires a quite different deployment, which we have also looked into in this chapter, both for development and for high-scale production environments.
In addition to simply serving WebSockets using Ratchet, we have also looked at how you can integrate Ratchet applications with other frameworks (for example, the Slim framework that you have already worked with in Chapter 5, Creating a RESTful Web Service) using the PSR-7 standard.
In Chapter 7, Building an Asynchronous Microservice Architecture, you will learn about yet another communication protocol that you can use to integrate applications. While WebSockets are still built on HTTP, the next chapter will feature the ZeroMQ...