Web Sockets and Express

[Joe McCann]

Hey Guys,

So I have been using Express to write some quick Node apps and am
doing well with it. However, I have a project where I need to use the
following Web Socket Node library:

http://github.com/miksago/node-websocket-server

It is pretty close to the ever-changing spec, but works really well.
However, I'm having difficulty getting it to play nice with Express.
I saw in a recent thread about just using Socket.IO but that is not an
option for me. I would like to hi-jack the request similar to the way
it was mentioned in the prior thread, but am not sure how to do it.

With Express I have this:

configure(function() {
set("root", __dirname)
use(Logger)
use(Static, { path: require("path").join(__dirname, "..",
"public") })
enable("show exceptions")
})

get("/", function() {
this.render("index.html.haml")
})

// Must run with a null host -- heroku requirment
run(parseInt(process.env.PORT || 8000), null)


and with the websocket node server library I have this:


var sys = require('sys'),
fs = require('fs'),
ws = require('./lib/ws');

// Debug flag
var debug = true;

// Logging helper
function log(message)
{
if (debug)
{
sys.log(message);
}
}

// Default data object
var defaultData = { 'type': '', 'sender': '', 'data': null };

// Normalize an object with the default data
function normalize(obj)
{
for (var key in defaultData)
{
if (!obj[key])
{
obj[key] = defaultData[key];
}
}
}

// Create server
var server = ws.createServer({ debug: debug });
server.addListener('listening', function() {
log('WebSocket server listening for connections...');
});

// Handle WebSocket Requests
server.addListener('connection', function(conn){
log('Client connected: ' + conn._id);
var data = { 'type': 'identity', 'sender': conn._id };
normalize(data);
server.send(conn._id, JSON.stringify(data));
data.type = 'connected';
server.broadcast(JSON.stringify(data));
conn.addListener('message', function(message) {
log('Broadcasting message from from ' + conn._id + ': ' + message);
var data = JSON.parse(message);
normalize(data);
data.sender = conn._id;
server.broadcast(JSON.stringify(data));
});
});

server.addListener('close', function(conn) {
log('Client disconnected: ' + conn._id);
var data = { 'type': 'disconnected', 'sender': conn._id };
normalize(data);
server.broadcast(JSON.stringify(data));
});


// Listen on port 8000
server.listen(8000, "localhost");



Any ideas on how to hi-jack with this type of setup?

Thanks!

Joe

[Joe McCann]

For what it's worth, I figured it out and it was quite trivial.

I simply changed the Web Socket instance to listen on port 8080 and
all is well.

server.listen(8080, "localhost");

This way the Web Socket server does the initial handshake over HTTP,
but using the ws:// protocol so Express disregards it. After that,
all HTTP requests are handled by Express and Web Socket requests
handled by the Web Socket instance.

Hope this helps out another Express n00b. ;)