CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptpythonwebsocket
Basj
Basj

Reputation: 46513

Is this the normal use of WebSocket or a low-level one?

I'm coding a simple chat room using WebSocket, Javascript (client), and Python (server). I read a few tutorials and documentations, and here are my two questions.

1) On the JS side, is it normal that I have to do things like:

ws.send(JSON.stringify({ "type" : "message", "message" : "Hello" }));
ws.send(JSON.stringify({ "type" : "username_change", "newusername" : "John" }));

?

Isn't there something "less low-level" like ws.emit('message', 'hello') or ws.emit('username_change', 'John') ?

2) On the server side (using Python + Bottle framework) is it standard to have:

users = set()

@get('/websocket', apply=[websocket])
def chat(ws):
    users.add(ws)
    while True:
        msg = ws.receive()
        for u in users:
            u.send(msg)
    users.remove(ws)

I find it quite low-level again to have to maintain a list of users myself, as well as the fact of sending messages one by one to all users with a for loop. I thought there was a .broadcast() function that allows to send a message automatically to all connected users.

Am I missing something in the Websocket-landscape?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 385

Answers (1)

jfriend00
jfriend00

Reputation: 707486

socket.io is a higher level interface built on top of webSockets. It offers many additional features, but foremost among them is a message passing scheme where you can do this to send data:

socket.emit("someMsg", someData);

And, this to receive:

socket.on("someMsg", function(data) {
    // process incoming data here
});

Here's a partial list of features socket.io adds on top of a webSocket: Moving from socket.io to raw websockets?

Upvotes: 1

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