The WebSocket API (WebSockets)
The WebSocket API is an advanced technology that makes it possible to open a two-way interactive communication session between the user's browser and a server. With this API, you can send messages to a server and receive event-driven responses without having to poll the server for a reply.
Note: While a WebSocket connection is functionally somewhat similar to standard Unix-style sockets, they are not related.
Interfaces
WebSocket
-
The primary interface for connecting to a WebSocket server and then sending and receiving data on the connection.
CloseEvent
-
The event sent by the WebSocket object when the connection closes.
MessageEvent
-
The event sent by the WebSocket object when a message is received from the server.
Guides
Tools
- AsyncAPI: A specification for describing event-driven architectures based on protocols like WebSocket. You can use it to describe WebSocket-based APIs just as you would describe REST APIs with the OpenAPI specification. Learn why you should consider using AsyncAPI with WebSocket and how to do so.
- HumbleNet: A cross-platform networking library that works in the browser. It consists of a C wrapper around WebSockets and WebRTC that abstracts away cross-browser differences, facilitating the creation of multi-user networking functionality for games and other apps.
- µWebSockets: Highly scalable WebSocket server and client implementation for C++11 and Node.js.
- Socket.IO: A long polling/WebSocket based third party transfer protocol for Node.js.
- SocketCluster: A pub/sub WebSocket framework for Node.js with a focus on scalability.
- WebSocket-Node: A WebSocket server API implementation for Node.js.
- Total.js: Web application framework for Node.js (Example: WebSocket chat)
- Faye: A
WebSocket
(two-ways connections) and EventSource (one-way connections) for Node.js Server and Client. - SignalR: SignalR will use WebSockets under the covers when it's available, and gracefully fallback to other techniques and technologies when it isn't, while your application code stays the same.
- Caddy: A web server capable of proxying arbitrary commands (stdin/stdout) as a websocket.
- ws: a popular WebSocket client & server library for Node.js.
- jsonrpc-bidirectional: Asynchronous RPC which, on a single connection, may have functions exported on the server and, and the same time, on the client (client may call server, server may also call client).
- cowboy: Cowboy is a small, fast and modern HTTP server for Erlang/OTP with WebSocket support.
- ZeroMQ: ZeroMQ is embeddable networking library that carries messages across in-process, IPC, TCP, UDP, TIPC, multicast and WebSocket.
- WebSocket King: A client tool to help develop, test and work with WebSocket servers.
- PHP WebSocket Server: Server written in PHP to handle connections via websockets wss:// or ws://and normal sockets over ssl:// ,tcp://
- Channels: Django library that adds support for WebSockets (and other protocols that require long running asynchronous connections).
- Flask-SocketIO: gives Flask applications access to low latency bi-directional communications between the clients and the server.
- Gorilla WebSocket: Gorilla WebSocket is a Go implementation of the WebSocket protocol.
Related Topics
Specifications
Specification |
---|
WebSockets Standard # the-websocket-interface |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser