Question

I want to work with WebSockets in Node.js web app, and I am looking for the easiest way to do this. I’ve seen so many github repositories seemingly providing some ease of use.

But, I’m just looking to see if there’s one that stands out as having the most support, or most widely implemented.

I was kind of leaning towards Socket.IO but I’m not entirely sure.

Any advice?

Thanks!

Answer 1

use now now or socket.io.

now is an abstraction build on socket.io which allows you to define methods on a shared object across client and server. This means you dont have to interact with the stream manually and can just seemingly call methods. Do read their best practices before use though.

now also has a grouping system in build which means you can talk to clients in groups rather then one or all.

socket.io itself is recommended because of it’s excellent browser support with its range of fallbacks. It’s also owned/maintained by a node.js startup so it’s more likely to be maintained in the future. And it also has a range of server-side socket.io implementations for platforms other then node.js so you can use the same API on multiple platforms.

If you find socket.IO too large or bloated you can go for the lightweight websocket-server. This is just a simple websocket implementation and is reasonably stable. I have personally used this if I want something which is a very minimal abstraction and if I want more low level access to the websocket server itself.