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- [](http://badge.fury.io/js/sockjs)
- SockJS family:
- * [SockJS-client](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-client) JavaScript client library
- * [SockJS-node](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node) Node.js server
- * [SockJS-erlang](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-erlang) Erlang server
- * [SockJS-tornado](https://github.com/MrJoes/sockjs-tornado) Python/Tornado server
- * [vert.x](https://github.com/eclipse/vert.x) Java/vert.x server
- Work in progress:
- * [SockJS-ruby](https://github.com/nyarly/sockjs-ruby)
- * [SockJS-netty](https://github.com/cgbystrom/sockjs-netty)
- * [SockJS-gevent](https://github.com/sdiehl/sockjs-gevent) ([and a fork](https://github.com/njoyce/sockjs-gevent))
- * [pyramid-SockJS](https://github.com/fafhrd91/pyramid_sockjs)
- * [wildcloud-websockets](https://github.com/wildcloud/wildcloud-websockets)
- * [SockJS-cyclone](https://github.com/flaviogrossi/sockjs-cyclone)
- * [SockJS-twisted](https://github.com/Fugiman/sockjs-twisted/)
- * [wai-SockJS](https://github.com/Palmik/wai-sockjs)
- * [SockJS-perl](https://github.com/vti/sockjs-perl)
- * [SockJS-go](https://github.com/igm/sockjs-go/)
- What is SockJS?
- ===============
- SockJS is a JavaScript library (for browsers) that provides a WebSocket-like
- object. SockJS gives you a coherent, cross-browser, Javascript API
- which creates a low latency, full duplex, cross-domain communication
- channel between the browser and the web server, with WebSockets or without.
- This necessitates the use of a server, which this is one version of, for Node.js.
- SockJS-node server
- ==================
- SockJS-node is a Node.js server side counterpart of
- [SockJS-client browser library](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-client)
- written in CoffeeScript.
- To install `sockjs-node` run:
- npm install sockjs
- A simplified echo SockJS server could look more or less like:
- ```javascript
- var http = require('http');
- var sockjs = require('sockjs');
- var echo = sockjs.createServer();
- echo.on('connection', function(conn) {
- conn.on('data', function(message) {
- conn.write(message);
- });
- conn.on('close', function() {});
- });
- var server = http.createServer();
- echo.installHandlers(server, {prefix:'/echo'});
- server.listen(9999, '0.0.0.0');
- ```
- (Take look at
- [examples](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node/tree/master/examples/echo)
- directory for a complete version.)
- Subscribe to
- [SockJS mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sockjs) for
- discussions and support.
- SockJS-node API
- ---------------
- The API design is based on common Node APIs like the
- [Streams API](http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.8/api/streams.html) or the
- [Http.Server API](http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.8/api/http.html#http.Server).
- ### Server class
- SockJS module is generating a `Server` class, similar to
- [Node.js http.createServer](http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.8/api/http.html#http.createServer)
- module.
- ```javascript
- var sockjs_server = sockjs.createServer(options);
- ```
- Where `options` is a hash which can contain:
- <dl>
- <dt>sockjs_url (string)</dt>
- <dd>Transports which don't support cross-domain communication natively
- ('eventsource' to name one) use an iframe trick. A simple page is
- served from the SockJS server (using its foreign domain) and is
- placed in an invisible iframe. Code run from this iframe doesn't
- need to worry about cross-domain issues, as it's being run from
- domain local to the SockJS server. This iframe also does need to
- load SockJS javascript client library, and this option lets you specify
- its url (if you're unsure, point it to
- <a href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/sockjs-client@1/dist/sockjs.min.js">
- the latest minified SockJS client release</a>, this is the default).
- You must explicitly specify this url on the server side for security
- reasons - we don't want the possibility of running any foreign
- javascript within the SockJS domain (aka cross site scripting attack).
- Also, sockjs javascript library is probably already cached by the
- browser - it makes sense to reuse the sockjs url you're using in
- normally.</dd>
- <dt>prefix (string regex)</dt>
- <dd>A url prefix for the server. All http requests which paths begins
- with selected prefix will be handled by SockJS. All other requests
- will be passed through, to previously registered handlers.</dd>
- <dt>response_limit (integer)</dt>
- <dd>Most streaming transports save responses on the client side and
- don't free memory used by delivered messages. Such transports need
- to be garbage-collected once in a while. `response_limit` sets
- a minimum number of bytes that can be send over a single http streaming
- request before it will be closed. After that client needs to open
- new request. Setting this value to one effectively disables
- streaming and will make streaming transports to behave like polling
- transports. The default value is 128K.</dd>
- <dt>websocket (boolean)</dt>
- <dd>Some load balancers don't support websockets. This option can be used
- to disable websockets support by the server. By default websockets are
- enabled.</dd>
- <dt>jsessionid (boolean or function)</dt>
- <dd>Some hosting providers enable sticky sessions only to requests that
- have JSESSIONID cookie set. This setting controls if the server should
- set this cookie to a dummy value. By default setting JSESSIONID cookie
- is disabled. More sophisticated behaviour can be achieved by supplying
- a function.</dd>
- <dt>log (function(severity, message))</dt>
- <dd>It's quite useful, especially for debugging, to see some messages
- printed by a SockJS-node library. This is done using this `log`
- function, which is by default set to `console.log`. If this
- behaviour annoys you for some reason, override `log` setting with a
- custom handler. The following `severities` are used: `debug`
- (miscellaneous logs), `info` (requests logs), `error` (serious
- errors, consider filing an issue).</dd>
- <dt>heartbeat_delay (milliseconds)</dt>
- <dd>In order to keep proxies and load balancers from closing long
- running http requests we need to pretend that the connection is
- active and send a heartbeat packet once in a while. This setting
- controls how often this is done. By default a heartbeat packet is
- sent every 25 seconds. </dd>
- <dt>disconnect_delay (milliseconds)</dt>
- <dd>The server sends a `close` event when a client receiving
- connection have not been seen for a while. This delay is configured
- by this setting. By default the `close` event will be emitted when a
- receiving connection wasn't seen for 5 seconds. </dd>
- <dt>disable_cors (boolean)</dt>
- <dd>Enabling this option will prevent
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing">CORS</a>
- headers from being included in the HTTP response. Can be used when the
- sockjs client is known to be connecting from the same origin as the
- sockjs server.</dd>
- </dl>
- ### Server instance
- Once you have create `Server` instance you can hook it to the
- [http.Server instance](http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.8/api/http.html#http.createServer).
- ```javascript
- var http_server = http.createServer();
- sockjs_server.installHandlers(http_server, options);
- http_server.listen(...);
- ```
- Where `options` can overshadow options given when creating `Server`
- instance.
- `Server` instance is an
- [EventEmitter](http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.10/api/events.html#events.EventEmitter),
- and emits following event:
- <dl>
- <dt>Event: connection (connection)</dt>
- <dd>A new connection has been successfully opened.</dd>
- </dl>
- All http requests that don't go under the path selected by `prefix`
- will remain unanswered and will be passed to previously registered
- handlers. You must install your custom http handlers before calling
- `installHandlers`.
- ### Connection instance
- A `Connection` instance supports
- [Node Stream API](http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.8/api/streams.html) and
- has following methods and properties:
- <dl>
- <dt>Property: readable (boolean)</dt>
- <dd>Is the stream readable?</dd>
- <dt>Property: writable (boolean)</dt>
- <dd>Is the stream writable?</dd>
- <dt>Property: remoteAddress (string)</dt>
- <dd>Last known IP address of the client.</dd>
- <dt>Property: remotePort (number)</dt>
- <dd>Last known port number of the client.</dd>
- <dt>Property: address (object)</dt>
- <dd>Hash with 'address' and 'port' fields.</dd>
- <dt>Property: headers (object)</dt>
- <dd>Hash containing various headers copied from last receiving request
- on that connection. Exposed headers include: `origin`, `referer`
- and `x-forwarded-for` (and friends). We explicitly do not grant
- access to `cookie` header, as using it may easily lead to security
- issues (for details read the section "Authorisation").</dd>
- <dt>Property: url (string)</dt>
- <dd><a href="http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.10/api/http.html#request.url">Url</a>
- property copied from last request.</dd>
- <dt>Property: pathname (string)</dt>
- <dd>`pathname` from parsed url, for convenience.</dd>
- <dt>Property: prefix (string)</dt>
- <dd>Prefix of the url on which the request was handled.</dd>
- <dt>Property: protocol (string)</dt>
- <dd>Protocol used by the connection. Keep in mind that some protocols
- are indistinguishable - for example "xhr-polling" and "xdr-polling".</dd>
- <dt>Property: readyState (integer)</dt>
- <dd>Current state of the connection:
- 0-connecting, 1-open, 2-closing, 3-closed.</dd>
- <dt>write(message)</dt>
- <dd>Sends a message over opened connection. A message must be a
- non-empty string. It's illegal to send a message after the connection was
- closed (either after 'close' or 'end' method or 'close' event).</dd>
- <dt>close([code], [reason])</dt>
- <dd>Asks the remote client to disconnect. 'code' and 'reason'
- parameters are optional and can be used to share the reason of
- disconnection.</dd>
- <dt>end()</dt>
- <dd>Asks the remote client to disconnect with default 'code' and
- 'reason' values.</dd>
- </dl>
- A `Connection` instance emits the following events:
- <dl>
- <dt>Event: data (message)</dt>
- <dd>A message arrived on the connection. Message is a unicode
- string.</dd>
- <dt>Event: close ()</dt>
- <dd>Connection was closed. This event is triggered exactly once for
- every connection.</dd>
- </dl>
- For example:
- ```javascript
- sockjs_server.on('connection', function(conn) {
- console.log('connection' + conn);
- conn.on('close', function() {
- console.log('close ' + conn);
- });
- conn.on('data', function(message) {
- console.log('message ' + conn,
- message);
- });
- });
- ```
- ### Footnote
- A fully working echo server does need a bit more boilerplate (to
- handle requests unanswered by SockJS), see the
- [`echo` example](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node/tree/master/examples/echo)
- for a complete code.
- ### Examples
- If you want to see samples of running code, take a look at:
- * [./examples/echo](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node/tree/master/examples/echo)
- directory, which contains a full example of a echo server.
- * [./examples/test_server](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node/tree/master/examples/test_server) a standard SockJS test server.
- Connecting to SockJS-node without the client
- --------------------------------------------
- Although the main point of SockJS it to enable browser-to-server
- connectivity, it is possible to connect to SockJS from an external
- application. Any SockJS server complying with 0.3 protocol does
- support a raw WebSocket url. The raw WebSocket url for the test server
- looks like:
- * ws://localhost:8081/echo/websocket
- You can connect any WebSocket RFC 6455 compliant WebSocket client to
- this url. This can be a command line client, external application,
- third party code or even a browser (though I don't know why you would
- want to do so).
- Note: This endpoint will *not send any heartbeat packets*.
- Deployment and load balancing
- -----------------------------
- There are two issues that need to be considered when planning a
- non-trivial SockJS-node deployment: WebSocket-compatible load balancer
- and sticky sessions (aka session affinity).
- ### WebSocket compatible load balancer
- Often WebSockets don't play nicely with proxies and load balancers.
- Deploying a SockJS server behind Nginx or Apache could be painful.
- Fortunately recent versions of an excellent load balancer
- [HAProxy](http://haproxy.1wt.eu/) are able to proxy WebSocket
- connections. We propose to put HAProxy as a front line load balancer
- and use it to split SockJS traffic from normal HTTP data. Take a look
- at the sample
- [SockJS HAProxy configuration](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node/blob/master/examples/haproxy.cfg).
- The config also shows how to use HAproxy balancing to split traffic
- between multiple Node.js servers. You can also do balancing using dns
- names.
- ### Sticky sessions
- If you plan deploying more than one SockJS server, you must make sure
- that all HTTP requests for a single session will hit the same server.
- SockJS has two mechanisms that can be useful to achieve that:
- * Urls are prefixed with server and session id numbers, like:
- `/resource/<server_number>/<session_id>/transport`. This is
- useful for load balancers that support prefix-based affinity
- (HAProxy does).
- * `JSESSIONID` cookie is being set by SockJS-node. Many load
- balancers turn on sticky sessions if that cookie is set. This
- technique is derived from Java applications, where sticky sessions
- are often necessary. HAProxy does support this method, as well as
- some hosting providers, for example CloudFoundry. In order to
- enable this method on the client side, please supply a
- `cookie:true` option to SockJS constructor.
- Development and testing
- -----------------------
- If you want to work on SockJS-node source code, you need to clone the
- git repo and follow these steps. First you need to install
- dependencies:
- cd sockjs-node
- npm install
- npm install --dev
- ln -s .. node_modules/sockjs
- You're ready to compile CoffeeScript:
- make build
- If compilation succeeds you may want to test if your changes pass all
- the tests. Currently, there are two separate test suites. For both of
- them you need to start a SockJS-node test server (by default listening
- on port 8081):
- make test_server
- ### SockJS-protocol Python tests
- To run it run something like:
- cd sockjs-protocol
- make test_deps
- ./venv/bin/python sockjs-protocol.py
- For details see
- [SockJS-protocol README](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-protocol#readme).
- ### SockJS-client QUnit tests
- You need to start a second web server (by default listening on 8080)
- that is serving various static html and javascript files:
- cd sockjs-client
- make test
- At that point you should have two web servers running: sockjs-node on
- 8081 and sockjs-client on 8080. When you open the browser on
- [http://localhost:8080/](http://localhost:8080/) you should be able
- run the QUnit tests against your sockjs-node server.
- For details see
- [SockJS-client README](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-client#readme).
- Additionally, if you're doing more serious development consider using
- `make serve`, which will automatically the server when you modify the
- source code.
- Various issues and design considerations
- ----------------------------------------
- ### Authorisation
- SockJS-node does not expose cookies to the application. This is done
- deliberately as using cookie-based authorisation with SockJS simply
- doesn't make sense and will lead to security issues.
- Cookies are a contract between a browser and an http server, and are
- identified by a domain name. If a browser has a cookie set for
- particular domain, it will pass it as a part of all http requests to
- the host. But to get various transports working, SockJS uses a middleman
- - an iframe hosted from target SockJS domain. That means the server
- will receive requests from the iframe, and not from the real
- domain. The domain of an iframe is the same as the SockJS domain. The
- problem is that any website can embed the iframe and communicate with
- it - and request establishing SockJS connection. Using cookies for
- authorisation in this scenario will result in granting full access to
- SockJS communication with your website from any website. This is a
- classic CSRF attack.
- Basically - cookies are not suited for SockJS model. If you want to
- authorise a session - provide a unique token on a page, send it as a
- first thing over SockJS connection and validate it on the server
- side. In essence, this is how cookies work.
- ### Deploying SockJS on Heroku
- Long polling is known to cause problems on Heroku, but
- [workaround for SockJS is available](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node/issues/57#issuecomment-5242187).
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