Book Image

Socket.IO Cookbook

By : Tyson Cadenhead
Book Image

Socket.IO Cookbook

By: Tyson Cadenhead

Overview of this book

Socket.IO is a JavaScript library that provides you with the ability to implement real-time analytics, binary streaming, instant messaging, and document collaboration. It has two parts: a client-side library that runs in the browser, and a server-side library for node.js. Socket.IO is event-driven and primarily uses the WebSocket protocol that allows us to emit data bi-directionally from the server and the client. Socket.IO This book is a complete resource, covering topics from webSocket security to scaling the server-side of a Socket.IO application and everything in between. This book will provide real-world examples of how secure bi-directional, full-duplex connections that can be created using Socket.IO for different environments. It will also explain how the connection vulnerabilities can be resolved for large numbers of users and huge amounts of data/messages. By the end of the book, you will be a competent Socket.IO developer. With the help of the examples and real-world solutions,you will learn to create fast, scalable, and dynamic real-time apps by creating efficient messaging systems between the server side and the client side using Socket.IO.

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Socket.IO Cookbook
Tyson Cadenhead
Oct, 2015 | 184 pages
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Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Socket.IO Cookbook
Socket.IO Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Wiring It Up
Wiring It Up
Introduction
Creating a Node HTTP server with Socket.IO
Creating an Express server with Socket.IO
Using Socket.IO as a cross-browser WebSocket
Debugging on the client
Debugging on the server
2
Creating Real-Time Dashboards
Creating Real-Time Dashboards
Introduction
Loading static data from the server
Creating a server-side clock
Loading data from MongoDB
Real-time analytics
Handling connection timeouts
3
Having Two-Way Conversations
Having Two-Way Conversations
Introduction
Creating a simple chat room
Managing the socket life cycle
Emitting a private message to another socket
Sending messages to all the sockets, except for the sender
Building a multiplayer tic-tac-toe game
4
Building a Room with a View
Building a Room with a View
Introduction
Creating chat channels with namespaces
Joining rooms
Leaving rooms
Listing rooms the socket is in
Creating private rooms
Setting up a default room
5
Securing Your Data
Securing Your Data
Introduction
Implementing basic authentication
Performing token-based authentication
Handling server-side validation
Locking down the HTTP referrer
Using secure WebSockets
6
Performing a Load Balancing Act
Performing a Load Balancing Act
Introduction
Performing load balancing with the Nginx server
Using the Node.js cluster
Using Redis to pass events between nodes
Using Memcached to manage multiple nodes
Using RabbitMQ to message events across nodes
7
Streaming Binary Data
Streaming Binary Data
Introduction
Broadcasting an image to other sockets
Uploading an image to the filesystem
Uploading an image to Amazon S3
Streaming audio
Streaming live video
8
Integrating with Mobile Applications
Integrating with Mobile Applications
Introduction
Throwing an alert when the socket connects
Pushing up data from the server
Responding to tap events from the device
Doing server-side pagination
Triggering hot deploys
Index
Index

Using secure WebSockets

WebSocket communications can either take place over the ws:// protocol or the wss:// protocol. They can be thought of in similar terms to the HTTP and HTTPS protocols in that one is secure and one isn't. Secure WebSockets are encrypted by the transport layer, so they are safer to use when handling sensitive data. The main feature of HTTPS (and wss) is that socket is encrypted from client to server, so if we're in the same network and we try to sniff the content, we won't see anything legible.

If your application uses the HTTPS protocol, you will also need to use the wss protocol for your WebSockets. Many browsers do not allow un-secure content when they use HTTPS.

In this recipe, we will learn how to force our Socket.IO communications to happen over the wss:// protocol for an extra layer of encryption.

Getting ready

In this recipe, we will need to create a self-signing certificate so that we can serve our app locally over the HTTPS protocol. For that, we will need a npm...

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