How to use SocketRocket with socket.io?

Question

The new iOS websocket library, SocketRocket, looks really awesome, and the chat example project is really sweet. The example chat server is written in Python, of which I know none. I'm slightly familiar with socket.io on node.js and prefer to try javascript. I tried connecting the SocketRocket TestChat simulator app to the node.js(6.10) socket.io(0.8.7) but the connection was refused. (Also, I'm not a node expert either, so this may be a silly question).

In a recent answer to an SO question, mikelikespie said to op: "I suggest updating your stack to use the iOS WebSocket library we just released."

What does that mean exactly? What is necessary to get the SocketRocket library to talk to a node socket.io server? Any sample code or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Solution 1

Well you socket.io has it's own protocol built on transport protocols such as websockets, or long polling, well SocketRocket is just a websocket library, no more. Socket.io also has some authentication, so it's not possible to use it, with normal web sockets. What I suggest you to use is a just websocket server, no more than that. Such as ws, which should compatible. There are other libraries, but, ws I believe is actively developed at the moment, and newer than others.

You can also make your clientside socket.io compatible, but I think its uneeded. Here's the specs for it: https://github.com/LearnBoost/socket.io-spec

Hope I helped.

Solution 2

socket.IO-objc on GitHub looks to be a mature Socket.IO / Objective C Library

It uses SocketRocket to handle the websocket connections.

This will allow you to have a socket server that supports older browsers (degrades to long-polling etc.) and is still accessable to your iOS app via SocketRocket.

Solution 3

I have just implemented an active socket connection between a Node.JS server, and an iOS application, using this library. I used this one because the README on Socket.IO-ObjC says

The current version of this library does not yet support socket.io v1.0. So if you want to use socket.io-objc, please fall back to v0.9.x.

but I always want to use the latest version for everything. So if you want to use Socket.IO v1.0, you can use the one on the link provided few line above.

Comments

[seeker12]

The ws library does seem like the way to go. I was unable to get a working implementation with ws, but that is a limitation of my javascript skills. I am marking this as answered because it makes sense and there are no other answers. Thanks.

[Suz]

The link is to a library for earlier versions of Socket.IO. For a project that works with socket.io v 0.9+ and 1.0, try this one: socket.IO-objc