Question

I am creating an app for my capstone project in college. This app will be used as a check-in app that lets the user keep track of appointments and actually check-in for their appointment using their phone.

I am using node and mongodb to create appointments, and for the user to find businesses using the app. The only problem I am having at the moment is establishing the link between the app and the website the businesses will use to monitor check-ins. I figured that I would probably be using socket.io for this. I have yet to implement socket.io into the app because I am still trying to wrap my head around how to implement this connection.

What I would like to do is have an event handler on the check-in button on the app, and when the user tries to check-in have it send a “notification” to the website. Does anyone have an tips on how I would implement this?

Answer 1

Socket.IO is exactly how you do this. You really should do the demo application on the Socket.IO homepage, as it is exactly what you are looking for.

Basically, when the check-in button is pressed, just do something like:

socket.emit('checkin', { /* put data, like an ID, in this object */ });

On the server:

socket.on('checkin', function (data) {
    // Your data passed will be in the data var
});

Socket.IO serializes all of the data and what not for you. Just emit. That’s all there is to it.