socket.io.js 404 (Using apache to host site)

Question

Alright, so I had my socket.io server listening on a different port, but in order to get it to work with https, I needed to have it listen without passing in a port (default). (It works fine on a different port loaded with http, but I need it to work on https)

My project was working fine, client could connect and send data fine. However, I moved the site over to my main domain, which has an SSL certificate. The site loads everything via https, so it couldn't load the http version of socket.io.js

However, now that I switched it to just var client = require("socket.io").listen().sockets; instead of listening on a different/specific port , it's still not working. Instead of giving me a connection error, it's not including the file at all.

My fear is that I'd end up needing to remake my whole site to host my files via node.js and I'd rather not have to do that.

I'm not using any other module than mysql-node and socket.io, and I'd prefer to keep it that way if possible. I am new to node.js, so I'm sorry if there's an obvious answer that I'm unaware of.

I looked around, however, and can't seem to find the answer anywhere. Or, at least a clear answer.

Would I be better off using websockets instead of socket.io? If so, how would I go about doing this? I'd be more willing to remake my node application instead of remaking my site, honestly.

I am including the socket.io.js file in the client-side like so:

<script src="https://mysite/socket-io/socket.io.js"></script>

but of course, 404 since it's not an actual file that's on my apache server. There's no folder/directory named socket-io in my public_html directory, so that makes sense to me.

But, how can I get this to work? Would I need to host my files via node.js or would I be better off using HTML5 websockets? A fairly large demographic of my site's users use mobile devices, so I'd have to be sure it works on mobile as well.

Answer 1

If you're going to use apache to host the socket.io.js file, then you need to put that file on your Apache server at a path that it can be served from by Apache, just like any other web file that you want the Apache server to serve. Or, you can just serve socket.io.js from a public CDN also and use the public CDN URL. It's just a JS file. You can put it anywhere or use any URL that reaches a place where the file will be served from. There are some advantages to letting node.js and socket.io serve it for you because it guarantees that client and server socket.io versions are always in sync, but you don't have to do it that way.

If you are using node.js (which it sounds like you are at least in some capacity), then the socket.io built into node.js will serve the file automatically if you are using node.js to serve your web page too and you've configured socket.io to listen on the same port as your node.js web server. In that case, your webpage and socket.io will use the same port and both will run through the node.js server.

You haven't really explained why you're using both node.js and Apache, how that architecture works and why you're serving some of your site with Apache rather than just using node.js for the whole site as that is certainly the cleaner option with socket.io.

You can use plain webSockets if you want instead of socket.io, but then you will likely have to build some of the socket.io functionality on top of the webSockets (auto-reconnect, message passing, etc...) and using plain webSockets won't really simplify any of the Apache/node.js questions you have. It's trivial to serve up the socket.io.js file to the client using either Apache or node.js and once the client has the file, it is actually more work to use plain webSockets than to use socket.io because of the extra features that socket.io has already built.