Question

Here’s my problem:

I have server A, running node.js and using socket.io for communicating with clients (web browsers). This all is running fine and dandy.

However, now that I have server B, which also needs to connect to server A through websockets, I have hit a wall. None of the node.js websocket clients I’ve found won’t work with the socket.io on the server A.

So, this is the case I’m striving for:

.--------.      .----------.      .----------.
| CLIENT | <--> | SERVER A | <--> | SERVER B |
'--------'      '----------'      '----------'

Client-server A connection is done through socket.io

Now, Server B (running node.js) should connect to server A via websocket (in order to go through port 80). But…

Even the example code in socket.io-client module doesn’t work… :/

// Connect to server
var socket = new io.Socket('localhost', {port: 8080});
socket.connect();

// Add a connect listener
socket.on('connect', function(socket) { 
    console.log('Connected.');
});

The code just passes without any errors and execution ends after few seconds.

Update: Code samples

Server (which works just fine) looks like this:

// Load requirements
var http = require('http'),
    io = require('socket.io');

// Create server & socket
var server = http.createServer(function(req, res){

    // Send HTML headers and message
    res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
    res.end('<h1>Aw, snap! 404</h1>');
});
server.listen(8080);
io = io.listen(server);

// Add a connect listener
io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) { 

    console.log('Client connected.');

    // Disconnect listener
    socket.on('disconnect', function() {
        console.log('Client disconnected.');
    });
});

Client looks like this

console.log('1');

// Connect to server
var io = require('socket.io-client')
var socket = new io.Socket('localhost', {port: 8080});
socket.connect();

console.log('2');

// Add a connect listener
socket.on('connect', function(socket) { 
    console.log('Connected!');
});

console.log('3');

1, 2 and 3 prints out just fine, no errors, and few seconds later the process just exits

Also, server A doesn’t output anything to the log, even though I have the socket.io logging set on “everything”.

Answer 1

Turns out I was using old examples, for some reason, even though I triple checked them. Well, doh.

Also, it turned out that the socket.io-client is broken on latest Node (6.x.x). Managed to find an update from github for it, replaced the files and yay, everything’s working!

Edit: Unfortunately I didn’t save any links to working examples but after quickly skimming through the code it seems that the only changes were to the client code, which now looks like this:

console.log('1');

// Connect to server
var io = require('socket.io-client')
var socket = io.connect('localhost:8080', {reconnect: true});

console.log('2');

// Add a connect listener
socket.on('connect', function(socket) { 
    console.log('Connected!');
});

console.log('3');