Socket.IO Cookbook: Over 40 recipes to help you create real-time JavaScript applications using the robust Socket.IO framework

Table of Contents

Socket.IO Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Wiring It Up

Introduction

Creating a Node HTTP server with Socket.IO

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Creating an Express server with Socket.IO

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

See also

Using Socket.IO as a cross-browser WebSocket

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Debugging on the client

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Debugging on the server

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

2. Creating Real-Time Dashboards

Introduction

Loading static data from the server

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Creating a server-side clock

How to do it…

How it works…

Loading data from MongoDB

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Real-time analytics

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Handling connection timeouts

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

3. Having Two-Way Conversations

Introduction

Creating a simple chat room

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Managing the socket life cycle

How to do it…

How it works…

Emitting a private message to another socket

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Sending messages to all the sockets, except for the sender

How to do it…

How it works…

Building a multiplayer tic-tac-toe game

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

4. Building a Room with a View

Introduction

Creating chat channels with namespaces

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Joining rooms

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Leaving rooms

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Listing rooms the socket is in

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Creating private rooms

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Setting up a default room

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

5. Securing Your Data

Introduction

Implementing basic authentication

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Performing token-based authentication

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Handling server-side validation

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Locking down the HTTP referrer

How to do it…

How it works…

Using secure WebSockets

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

6. Performing a Load Balancing Act

Introduction

Performing load balancing with the Nginx server

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Using the Node.js cluster

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Using Redis to pass events between nodes

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Using Memcached to manage multiple nodes

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Using RabbitMQ to message events across nodes

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

7. Streaming Binary Data

Introduction

Broadcasting an image to other sockets

Getting ready…

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Uploading an image to the filesystem

Getting ready…

How to do it…

How it works…

Uploading an image to Amazon S3

Getting ready…

How to do it…

How it works…

Streaming audio

How to do it…

How it works…

Streaming live video

How to do it…

How it works…

8. Integrating with Mobile Applications

Introduction

Throwing an alert when the socket connects

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Pushing up data from the server

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Responding to tap events from the device

How to do it…

How it works…

Doing server-side pagination

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Triggering hot deploys

How to do it…

How it works…

Index

Socket.IO Cookbook

Socket.IO Cookbook

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: October 2015

Production reference: 1081015

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78588-086-5

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Author

Tyson Cadenhead

Reviewers

Gonzalo Ayuso

George Brassey

Commissioning Editor

Amarabha Banerjee

Acquisition Editor

Reshma Raman

Content Development Editor

Mayur Pawanikar

Technical Editor

Siddhesh Ghadi

Copy Editor

Relin Hedly

Project Coordinator

Kranti Berde

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Mariammal Chettiyar

Graphics

Disha Haria

Production Coordinator

Conidon Miranda

Cover Work

Conidon Miranda

About the Author

Tyson Cadenhead works as a senior JavaScript engineer at Aloompa in Nashville, Tennessee. He has dedicated his professional career to building large-scale applications in JavaScript and Node. Tyson addresses audiences at various conferences and programming meetups on how to build real-time web applications with Socket.IO or Meteor.js. He blogs on topics such as JavaScript and web technologies at http://www.tysoncadenhead.com.

Tyson lives in the greater Nashville area with his wife and two sons, where he enjoys gardening, raising chickens, reading philosophy and economics books, and playing guitar.

About the Reviewers

Gonzalo Ayuso is a web architect and specializes in open source technologies. He has more than 15 years of experience in web development. Gonzalo holds extensive experience in delivering scalable, secure, and high-performance web solutions to large-scale enterprise clients.

He has a varied background, especially in providing backend code. Gonzalo mainly focuses on Internet technologies, databases, mobile development, and programming languages, especially PHP, Python, and JavaScript. He blogs at http://gonzalo123.com. Gonzalo also likes to speak at technology conferences and organize coding dojos. You can also follow him on Twitter at @gonzalo123.

George Brassey is a developer from London. He loves art, music, and technology. George earned a degree in cinema studies from the New York University and worked in the film industry before switching to software development. He enjoys projects where technology intersects with the arts. George currently works with an expert team at Paddle8, building the future of online art auctions.

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Preface

Socket.IO is an excellent library for real-time messaging between the client side and the server side. Whether you want to create a chat room in your browser, reload your hybrid mobile application, or push fresh data to an internal dashboard, this book will show you how to do it.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Wiring It Up, provides a quick introduction to Socket.IO. It tells you how to get up and running with a Node server. This chapter concludes with debugging tips for the server and the client.

Chapter 2, Creating Real-Time Dashboards, talks about how to stream data from the server to the client. It covers how to emit MongoDB data and how to handle Socket.IO connection timeouts.

Chapter 3, Having Two-Way Conversations, provides several recipes on how to build a two-way communication. From the quintessential chat room example to a fun recipe on how to create a real-time tic-tac-toe game, it includes several other topics.

Chapter 4, Building a Room with a View, explores views and namespaces and how they can be used to target your events to specific consumers.

Chapter 5, Securing Your Data, takes a look at how to secure the Socket.IO communication with various forms of authentication, including how to lock down the HTTP referrer and how to use secure web sockets.

Chapter 6, Performing a Load Balancing Act, covers various techniques for load-balancing Socket.IO, focusing on technologies such as Redis, Memcached, and RabbitMQ.

Chapter 7, Streaming Binary Data, explores topics ranging from emitting images as data to streaming video and audio.

Chapter 8, Integrating With Mobile Applications, talks about various techniques for using Socket.IO in mobile applications. It also provides a recipe for how to trigger hot deploys from Socket.IO.

What you need for this book

This book was written using a Macbook Air running Node. However, Node and Socket.IO can be run on a Windows or Linux machine as well.

All the software used in this book is free and open source. You will definitely need to be running Node for most of the recipes. There are also some sections that cover MongoDB, Redis, Memcached, and RabbitMQ.

Who this book is for

If you have some knowledge of JavaScript and Node.js and want to create awe-inspiring application experiences with real-time communication, then this book is for you. Developers with knowledge of other languages should also be able to easily follow along.

Sections

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it..., How it works..., There's more..., and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

Getting ready

This section tells you what to expect in the recipe and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.

How to do it…

This section contains the steps required to