socket.io server not working outside of network

Question

Heello!!!

With the help of this tool, I managed to port forward port 3000.. https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/

The reason I forwarded this port is because I have a chat application I made that works really well on localhost. Sadly, when asking my friends to open up my web chat app (http://mywebsite.com:81/chat/) the javascript stuff doesn't connect to my server over on port 3000...

'here is some of my code:

server.js

const io = require('socket.io')(3000)

const users = {}

io.on('connection', socket => {
    // On message receive
    socket.on('msg', message => {
        //broadcast message
        socket.broadcast.emit('msg', {name: users[socket.id], msg: message});

        // If message starts with "/" AKA is a command
        if(message.startsWith("/")){
            message=message.split(" ");
            //message[0]= /help

            if(message[0] == "/say"){
                txt=message.splice(1).join(" "); // GET TEXT AFTER /help
                socket.emit('msg', {name: "TomatoBot", msg: txt});
            }else if(message[0] == "/help"){
                txt=message.splice(1).join(" "); // GET TEXT AFTER /help
                socket.emit('msg', {name: "TomatoBot", msg: "help dialog"});
            }else if(message[0] == "/list"){
                socket.emit('msg', {name: "TomatoBot", msg: users[socket.id]+" connected users:\n"});
            }else{
                //no commands found, throw error
                socket.emit('msg', {name: "TomatoBot", msg: "@"+users[socket.id]+"\nUnknown command: "+message[0]+". Type /help for a list of commands."});
            }
        }
    })

    // On user join
    socket.on('new', name => {
        users[socket.id] = name;
        socket.broadcast.emit('new', name);
    })

    // On user disconnect
    socket.on('disconnect', () => {
        socket.broadcast.emit('bye', users[socket.id]);
        delete users[socket.id];
    })
})

script.js (my client side script)

const socket = io(':3000'); // go from localhost:81 to localhost:3000!!
const form = document.getElementById('form');
const input = document.getElementById('input');
const msgbox = document.getElementById('msgbox');

const name = prompt('name?');
socket.emit('new', name);
appendMessage(name+' joined');
// etc etc.....

So as I already said the connection and messages gets thru over on localhost but as soon as I use an external domain/IP nothing works anymore!! When directly accessing mywebsite.org:3000/socket.io/socket.io.js from the external world the connection DOES work!!

Im pretty lost here, it must be due to some stupid error in my code..

Thanks for the help everybody!!

Answer 1

You don't need to use other port than port what you use for http server.

On server side

const http = require(`http`)
const io = require(`socket.io`)(http)

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  // Use this server for http://mywebsite.com:81
}).listen(81)

io.on(`connection`, client => {
    // Use this socket for websocket
})

On client side

const socket = io(`http://mywebsite.com:81`)