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.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Socket.IO Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating a simple chat room


A basic chat room application is one of the most widely used demos. This shows off Socket.IO or even web sockets in a more general sense. The reason for this is that it immediately gives the business case for Socket.IO in a way that is easy to follow and digest.

Building a basic chat room with Socket.IO is neither terribly difficult or complex. This is the sort of application that Socket.IO was designed for.

When we have completed our chat application, it will look something similar to the following screenshot:

Getting ready

For this recipe, we will use jQuery for simple DOM manipulation and Bootstrap for styling purposes. None of these libraries are required to create a chat app with Socket.IO, but they all provide useful utilities that we can easily tap into.

How to do it…

To create a simple chat application with Socket.IO, follow these steps:

  1. Create a server.js file. This file will start your server and emit Socket.IO events whenever a new message is posted to the...