socket.io

Sockets for the rest of us

The socket.io client is basically a simple HTTP Socket interface implementation. It allows you to establish a realtime connection with a server (see socket.io server here), hiding the complexity of the different transports (WebSocket, Flash, forever iframe, XHR long polling, XHR multipart encoded, etc).

Features

• Supports

  • WebSocket
  • Adobe Flash Socket
  • ActiveX HTMLFile (IE)
  • XHR with multipart encoding
  • XHR with long-polling

• Tested on

  • Safari 4
  • Google Chrome 5
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 8
  • iPhone Safari
  • iPad Safari
  • Firefox 3
  • Firefox 4 (Minefield)

  Testing on Safari 3, Chrome 4, Opera and iPhone iPad is pending (although it will probably work). Contributions are welcome!

• ActionScript Socket is known not to work behind proxies, as it doesn't have access to the user agent proxy settings to implement the CONNECT HTTP method. If it fails, socket.io will try something else.

• On a successful connection, it remembers the transport for next time (stores it in a cookie).

• Small. Closure Compiled with all deps: 5.82kb (gzipped).

• Easy to use! See socket.io-node for the server to connect to.

How to use

In your head

<script src="/path/to/socket.io.js">
<script>
	io.setPath('/path/to/socket.io/');
</script>

In your code

socket = new io.Socket('localhost');
socket.connect();
socket.send('some data');
socket.on('message', function(data){
	alert('got some data' + data);
});

For an example, check out the chat source.

Notes

IMPORTANT! When checking out the git repo, make sure to include the submodules. One way to do it is:

git clone [repo] --recursive

Another, once cloned

git submodule update --init --recursive

Documentation

io.Socket

new io.Socket(host, [options]);

Options:

• port

    Current port or 80
  

  The port socket.io server is attached to (defaults to the document.location port)

• resource

    socket.io
  

  The resource is what allows the socket.io server to identify incoming connections by socket.io clients. In other words, any HTTP server can implement socket.io and still serve other normal, non-realtime HTTP requests.

• transports

    ['websocket', 'flashsocket', 'htmlfile', 'xhr-multipart', 'xhr-polling']
  

  A list of the transports to attempt to utilize (in order of preference)

• transportOptions

    {
    	someTransport: {
    		someOption: true
    	},
    	...
    }
  

  An object containing (optional) options to pass to each transport.

Properties:

• options

  The passed in options combined with the defaults

• connected

  Whether the socket is connected or not.

• connecting

  Whether the socket is connecting or not.

• transport

  The transport instance.

Methods:

• connect

  Establishes a connection

• send(message)

  A string of data to send.

• disconnect

  Closes the connection

• on(event, λ)

  Adds a listener for the event event

• removeEvent(event, λ)

  Removes the listener λ for the event event

Events:

• connect

  Fired when the connection is established and the handshake successful

• message(message)

  Fired when a message arrives from the server

• close

  Fired when the connection is closed. Be careful with using this event, as some transports will fire it even under temporary, expected disconnections (such as XHR-Polling).

• disconnect

  Fired when the connection is considered disconnected.

Changelog

2010 08 02 - 0.5.4 (9.95KB)

• Added io.util.load as a reusable onload handler
• Added io.util.ios which reports if the UA is running on iPhone or iPad
• No more loading bar on iPhone: XHR-Polling now connects onload for the iOS WebKit, and waits 10 ms to launch the initial connection.

Credits

Guillermo Rauch <guillermo@learnboost.com>

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2010 LearnBoost <dev@learnboost.com>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.