Socket.IO communication with backends in other languages

[David Benko]

I was looking for a solution to integrate a backend that I already
have made in Java with socket.io because its great browser
compatibility and I didnt want to rewrite all server in javascript.

So I tried all solutions around there:

https://github.com/ibdknox/socket.io-netty
https://github.com/benkay/java-socket.io.client
https://github.com/TooTallNate/Java-WebSocket
https://github.com/Ovea/Socket.IO-Java

And probably others. Couldn't get any of them working the way I wanted
(some of them are buggy with newer versions/drafts of socket.io or
websocket, jetty servlet sucks, etc).

So I made the simplest solution I could thought of: a simple tcp
socket, wich may work for every language that have socket api

I wanted to create a communication channel between browser and my Java
backend so this is how it works:

- Create a Node.JS TCP Server
- Java connects to node.js and send a string with the namespace name
it wants
- node.js then create a socket.io server with the namespace and start
forwarding all data from socket to all socket.io clients connected to
that namespace

A better approach would be replace sockets with something faster (like
http://www.zeromq.org/ - https://github.com/EhevuTov/netPeek)

Codes:

- node.js server: http://pastebin.com/Fv9g7sbF
- java code to send messages: http://pastebin.com/aNjuJjHa
- html sample code: http://pastebin.com/uazEgybE
* make sure to use the last socket.io (v0.8.7)

When I started this I had no js/nodejs/socket.io experience so as you
can see the server code is really messy and probably highly non
optimized.

Feel free to share opinions, sugestions, bugs and improvements

Thanks

[Pavel Sakun]

Hi David.

Didn't take a look at the code, but i would do the same as you described: node.js as a proxy between socket.io client and tcp java server. It's not complex and should work.

Pavel.

--
Best regards.
Pavel.

[Su]

i tried to run your code under windows environment but failed.
Can you describe in more details how you get that to work please?
thank you.

On Nov 24, 8:49 am, David Benko <davidbe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was looking for a solution to integrate a backend that I already
> have made in Java with socket.io because its great browser
> compatibility and I didnt want to rewrite all server in javascript.
>
> So I tried all solutions around there:
>

> https://github.com/ibdknox/socket.io-nettyhttps://github.com/benkay/java-socket.io.clienthttps://github.com/TooTallNate/Java-WebSockethttps://github.com/Ovea/Socket.IO-Java

>
> And probably others. Couldn't get any of them working the way I wanted
> (some of them are buggy with newer versions/drafts of socket.io or
> websocket, jetty servlet sucks, etc).
>
> So I made the simplest solution I could thought of: a simple tcp
> socket, wich may work for every language that have socket api
>
> I wanted to create a communication channel between browser and my Java
> backend so this is how it works:
>
> - Create a Node.JS TCP Server
> - Java connects to node.js and send a string with the namespace name
> it wants
> - node.js then create a socket.io server with the namespace and start
> forwarding all data from socket to all socket.io clients connected to
> that namespace
>

> A better approach would be replace sockets with something faster (likehttp://www.zeromq.org/-https://github.com/EhevuTov/netPeek)

[David Benko]

First you need to install node and npm

http://nodejs.org/#download

http://npmjs.org/doc/README.html#Installing-on-Windows-Experimental
On the same folder of server.js type: npm install socket.io

Then: node server.js

Server is running, now you can run the java code

javac Client.java

java Client

It start sending data to the server and you can receive it in a browser by running that html example and checking javascript console (chrome has a built in js console or you can install firebug in firefox)

Good luck. 

2011/12/5 Su <suy...@gmail.com>