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How to create a Websocket server
The easiest way to handle Websocket requests is to use the websockets/ws module in a middleware plugin.
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Install the
websocket/ws
module.$ npm install --save-dev ws
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Create a middleware plugin. Save the following example code as
websocket.js
. This plugin delegates Websocket request handling to the websocket module by passing inlws.server
. If a Websocket request comes in, it will be handled by this plugin else passed to the next middleware plugin in the stack.class Websocket { middleware (config, lws) { const WebSocket = require('ws') const wss = new WebSocket.Server({ server: lws.server }) wss.on('connection', socket => { socket.on('message', message => { console.log(`Received: ${message}`) const reply = "Wow, that's great" console.log(`Sending: ${reply}`) socket.send(reply) }) }) } } export default Websocket
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Now we need a client to test our server. Save this as
index.html
.<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Websocket example</title> </head> <body> <h1>Websocket example</h1> <p><button>Send message</button></p> <pre><code></code></pre> <script> const socket = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:8000') const $ = document.querySelector.bind(document) function sendMessage (msg) { $('code').innerHTML += `Sending: ${msg}\n` socket.send(msg) } socket.addEventListener('open', () => { sendMessage('Hello from the client') }) socket.addEventListener('message', event => { $('code').innerHTML += `Received: ${event.data}\n` }) $('button').addEventListener('click', e => { sendMessage('Client clicked the button') }) </script> </body> </html>
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Launch the server using our Websocket plugin plus lws-static to handle requests for static assets (e.g.
index.html
).$ ws --stack websocket.js lws-static Listening on http://mba4.local:8000, http://127.0.0.1:8000, http://192.168.0.200:8000
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Finally, open your browser, navigate to
http://127.0.0.1:8000
and click the button. On the client, you should see this output:Sending: Hello from the client Received: Wow, that's great Sending: Client clicked the button Received: Wow, that's great
And the output from the server should look like this:
Received: Hello from the client Sending: Wow, that's great Received: Client clicked the button Sending: Wow, that's great