Home

Basic features

//load library
var ws = require('/lib/wsUtil');

// Bind the websocket event handler to the ws object
ws.openWebsockets(exports, host);

That's it. Now your socket connection is live and ready.

Another way of opening your socket connection is to manually bind the exports methods

var ws = require('/lib/wsUtil');

exports.get = ws.sendSocketResponse;
exports.webSocketEvent = ws.getWsEvents;

// Some code

There are two ways to listen for the four different websocket events.

// Set main handlers

// set individual event handlers
ws.setEventHandler('open',      openHandler);
ws.setEventHandler('close',     closeHandler);
ws.setEventHandler('message',   messageHandler);
ws.setEventHandler('error',     errorHandler);

// set them all at once
ws.setEventHandlers({
    open:       openHandler,
    close:      closeHandler,
    message:    messageHandler,
    error:      errorHandler
});

// Set additional handlers (for logging and none immediate actions or extra features)

ws.addHandlers('open',    additionalHandler);
ws.addHandlers('close',   additionalHandler);
ws.addHandlers('message', additionalHandler);
ws.addHandlers('error',   additionalHandler);

// Add as many handlers as you want

Group your users

function openHandler(event) {
    var autoremove = true; // Remove client from group when close event
    ws.createGroup('global', autoremove); // Idempotent function
    ws.addUserToGroup(event.session.id, 'global');
}

function closeHandler(event) {
    // since autoremove is set, we don't care about removing manually
    // but we might want to keep track in some objects
    delete serverUsers[event.session.id];
    var message = {
        event: 'user_exit',
        id: event.session.id
    };
    ws.sendToGroup('global', message); // message will be JSON.stringified
}

function messageHandler(msg) { // For event.type === message it is only the message that is passed to the handler
    var message = {         // The event message will try to be parsed as JSON
        event: msg.event,
        message: msg.message,
        username: msg.username,
        timestamp: Date.now()
    };
    ws.sendToGroup(msg.room, message);
}

Send individual messages to clients

var randomIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * ws.getGroupUsers('global').length);
var id = ws.getGroupUsers('global')[randomIndex];
var message = { hello: 'world'};
ws.send(id, message); // Will be stringified

This is the basic features for the web socket library. Some notes

  • The sendSocketResponseObject is the same object from the Enonic XP example
  • Since messages from the socket is always string, the library will always try to convert it to JSON
  • Sending messages will check for type and stringify it if needed
  • It is assumed that the host for the websocket communication is portalLib.serviceUrl({ service: 'websocket' }). If you are using any other host, it needs to be specified in the openWebsockets or sendSocketResponse methods

Additional features

Create a new SocketEmitter to make the websocket implementation act like a pub/sub provider

Functionalities here are shamelessly inspired by socket.io nodeJS library, with limitations

// how to use
var io = new ws.SocketEmitter();

io.connect(function(socket) {
    io.broadcast("new-connection", {id: socket.id});
    socket.emit("hi", {msg: "hello from server"});
    socket.on('ping', function(message) {
        // do something with message or
        socket.emit('pong', message); // send the message back to client
        socket.sendTo(message.recipient, message.content); // send message between clients
    });
})

Turn off default logging

By default wsUtils server will logg all activity to the default output. Turn this off by setting xp.item.wsUtils.printLog = false in your project config which include this library.