implementing 'orders' on peerjs

[André Dias]

Hi, for my specific use case I require communication between 2 peers solely for signaling, yes this could be achieved with a data channel but the effort it takes to create a data channel and maintaining it is unnecessary for a simple message for custom app-signaling, not to mention is unnecessarily stresses the user.

So what I decided to implement 'orders', the idea is that a peer order another peer, triggering an event without establishing a data channel, the server is only required to send a message from one to the other, through it's active websockets

Implementation.

server: 

added 'ORDER' message type to the switch

*still trying to find out why sockets after 2 min of inactivity, might fiddle with a heartbeat

client

//added to message type switch

 case 'ORDER': //order given by the server

this.emit('order', message.subType, message.data);//just condensing the custom events inside the order handler, for clarity

break;

//the hard part

  Peer.prototype.order = function(dst,subType, data) {//dst is the peer id of the ordered peer, subType is order event to be triggered

  if (this.disconnected) {

      util.warn('You cannot order a Peer because you called ' +

      '.disconnect() on this Peer and ended your connection with the ' +

      'server. You can create a new Peer to reconnect.');

      this.emitError('disconnected', 'Cannot connect to server after disconnecting from it.');

      return;

  }

  if (!dst) {

    util.error('To order, please provide an online recipients id');

    return;

  }

  var order;

  order.dst= dst;

  order.data = data;

  order.type: 'ORDER';

  order.subType: subType;

  this.socket.send(order){}, function(err) {

  util.log('Failed to send order, ', err);

      return;

  };

};

Gonna start testing in a bit, just wanted to know if I'm making any glaring mistake and/or if there is interest in this feature.

Also any ideas why my websockets keeps closing every 2 min of inactivity?

lastly where could I place an error for dst not connected?
(disclaimer: university student in an internship working in a webrtc based webapp, learnt javascript a fortnight ago...)

[André Dias]

  Peer.prototype.order = function(dst,subType, data) {//dst is the peer id of the ordered peer, subType is order event to be triggered

  if (this.disconnected) {

      util.warn('You cannot order a Peer because you called ' +

      '.disconnect() on this Peer and ended your connection with the ' +

      'server. You can create a new Peer to reconnect.');

      this.emitError('disconnected', 'Cannot connect to server after disconnecting from it.');

      return;

  }

  if (!dst) {

    util.error('To order, please provide an online recipients id');

    return;

  }

  var order = {

  dst: dst,

  data: data,

  type: 'ORDER',

  subType: subType

  };

  this.socket.send(order);

};

Fixed a couple of syntax error.
Now I'm stuck, after digging around some more I'm hitting this ->https://github.com/peers/peerjs-server/issues/49
On firefox I'm hitting a CORS error, on chrome, it fails to connect the websocket

[André Dias]

Got it working.
//message type switch case

    case 'ORDER': //order given by the server

this.emit('order', message.data.subType, message.data.data);

break;

//order command

  Peer.prototype.order = function(dst,subType, data) {//dst is the peer id of the ordered peer, subType is order event to be triggered

  if (this.disconnected) {

      util.warn('You cannot order a Peer because you called ' +

      '.disconnect() on this Peer and ended your connection with the ' +

      'server. You can create a new Peer to reconnect.');

      this.emitError('disconnected', 'Cannot connect to server after disconnecting from it.');

      return;

  }

  if (!dst) {

    util.error('To order, please provide an online recipients id');

    return;

  }

  var order = {

  dst: dst,

  data: { subType: subType, data:data},

  type: 'ORDER',

  payload: ''

  };

  this.socket.send(order);

  util.log('order sent of subtype: ' +  subType + ' to: ' + dst + ' data:' + data);

};

With this code I managed to 'order' a user to establish a call to another one.

//app, user-side code

peer.on('order', function (subType, data){

switch( subType){

case 'call' :

var call = peer.call(data, window.localStream);

step3(call);//adds on stream handler

console.log("received call: ", Date());

break;

case 'end_call'://untested yet

window.existingCall.close();

step2();

break;

}

console.log('order received, of subtype' + subType);

var call = peer.call($('#callto-id').val(), window.localStream);

});

However I only managed to get my peer server to work by disabling Same Origin Policy from chrome, otherwise the server isn't answering to the the websocket upgrade request.