Invalid session / Session is disconnected - socket.io

What can be the reasons that cause a socket.io session to be crashed and server returns invalid session or session is disconnected ?

There is a specific situation that causes these problems with the session. When a client fails to send the pings at the expected interval the server declares the client gone and deletes the session. If a client that falls into this situation later tries to send a ping or another request using the now invalidated session id it will receive one of these errors.
Another possible problem with the same outcome is when the client does send the pings at the correct intervals, but the server is blocked or too busy to process these pings in time.
So to summarize, if you think your clients are well behaved, I would look at potential blocking tasks in your server.

Ok, I'll illustrate my problem in this figure project's architecture .
In fact, I have a websocket between the react app and the rasa ( tool for creating chatbots) based on flask. bot response need to access to an external API to retrieve some data. Here where things go wrong. Sometimes, these requests take too long to return a response, and that's when websocket misbehave.

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Ways to wait if server is not available in gRPC from client side

I hope who ever is reading this is doing well.
Here's a scenario that I'm wondering about: there's a global ClientConn that is being used for all grpc requests to a server. Then that server goes down. I was wondering if there's a way to wait for this server to go up with some timeout in order for the usage of grpc in this scenario to be more resilient to failures(either a transient failure or server goes down). I was thinking keep looping if the clientConn state is connecting or a transient failure and if a timeout occurs when the clientConn state was a transient failure then return an error since the server might be down.
I was wondering if this would work if there are multiple requests coming in the client side that would need this ClientConn so then multiple go routines would be running this loop. Would appreciate any other alternatives, suggestions, or advice.
When you call grpc.Dial to connect to a server and receive a grpc.ClientConn, it will automatically handle reconnections for you. When you call a method or request a stream, it will fail if it can't connect to the server or if there is an error processing the request.
You could retry a few times if the error indicates that it is due to the network. You can check the grpc status codes in here https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/blob/master/codes/codes.go#L31 and extract them from the returned error using status.FromError: https://pkg.go.dev/google.golang.org/grpc/status#FromError
You also have the grpc.WaitForReady option (https://pkg.go.dev/google.golang.org/grpc#WaitForReady) which can be used to block the grpc call until the server is ready if it is in a transient failure. In that case, you don't need to retry, but you should probably add a timeout that cancels the context to have control over how long you stay blocked.
If you want to even avoid trying to call the server, you could use ClientConn.WaitForStateChange (which is experimental) to detect any state change and call ClientConn.GetState to determine in what state is the connection to know when it is safe to start calling the server again.

Long-polling vs websocket when expecting one-time response from server-side

I have read many articles on real-time push notifications. And the resume is that websocket is generally the preferred technique as long as you are not concerned about 100% browser compatibility. And yet, one article states that
Long polling - potentially when you are exchanging single call with
server, and server is doing some work in background.
This is exactly my case. The user presses a button which initiates some complex calculations on server-side, and as soon as the answer is ready, the server sends a push-notification to the client. The question is, can we say that for the case of one-time responses, long-polling is better choice than websockets?
Or unless we are concerned about obsolete browsers support and if I am going to start the project from scratch, websockets should ALWAYS be preferred to long-polling when it comes to push-protocol ?
The question is, can we say that for the case of one-time responses,
long-polling is better choice than websockets?
Not really. Long polling is inefficient (multiple incoming requests, multiple times your server has to check on the state of the long running job), particularly if the usual time period is long enough that you're going to have to poll many times.
If a given client page is only likely to do this operation once, then you can really go either way. There are some advantages and disadvantages to each mechanism.
At a response time of 5-10 minutes you cannot assume that a single http request will stay alive that long awaiting a response, even if you make sure the server side will stay open that long. Clients or intermediate network equipment (proxies, etc...) just make not keep the initial http connection open that long. That would have been the most efficient mechanism if you could have done that. But, I don't think you can count on that for a random network configuration and client configuration that you do not control.
So, that leaves you with several options which I think you already know, but I will describe here for completeness for others.
Option 1:
Establish websocket connection to the server by which you can receive push response.
Make http request to initiate the long running operation. Return response that the operation has been successfully initiated.
Receive websocket push response some time later.
Close webSocket (assuming this page won't be doing this again).
Option 2:
Make http request to initiate the long running operation. Return response that the operation has been successfully initiated and probably some sort of taskID that can be used for future querying.
Using http "long polling" to "wait" for the answer. Since these requests will likely "time out" before the response is received, you will have to regularly long poll until the response is received.
Option 3:
Establish webSocket connection.
Send message over webSocket connection to initiate the operation.
Receive response some time later that the operation is complete.
Close webSocket connection (assuming this page won't be using it any more).
Option 4:
Same as option 3, but using socket.io instead of plain webSocket to give you heartbeat and auto-reconnect logic to make sure the webSocket connection stays alive.
If you're looking at things purely from the networking and server efficiency point of view, then options 3 or 4 are likely to be the most efficient. You only have the overhead of one TCP connection between client and server and that one connection is used for all traffic and the traffic on that one connection is pretty efficient and supports actual push so the client gets notified as soon as possible.
From an architecture point of view, I'm not a fan of option 1 because it just seems a bit convoluted when you initiate the request using one technology and then send the response via another and it requires you to create a correlation between the client that initiated an incoming http request and a connected webSocket. That can be done, but it's extra bookkeeping on the server. Option 2 is simple architecturally, but inefficient (regularly polling the server) so it's not my favorite either.
There is an alterternative that don't require polling or having an open socket connection all the time.
It's called web push.
The Push API gives web applications the ability to receive messages pushed to them from a server, whether or not the web app is in the foreground, or even currently loaded, on a user agent. This lets developers deliver asynchronous notifications and updates to users that opt in, resulting in better engagement with timely new content.
Some perks are
You need to ask for notification permission
Your site needs to have a service worker running in foreground
having a service worker also means you need to have SSL / HTTPS

Making request using WebSockets in sails but not receiving response from the server

I'm starting with Websockets and I have a problem.
I have a sails.js application that uses sockets to update the client side.
On the client side it makes an API call using socket.get("/api/v1/actor...") to bring all the items of the database. When I see what the WebSocket's traffic on the Chrome console:
As you can see, the connection has been established and the API call has been correctly done through the socket.
The problem is, there is no answer from the server, not even an error.
If I make the same API call using ajax, I get response, but it doesn't work using WebSockets.
Any idea what might be producing this behavior?
EDIT: I add here the code here that processes the request and this one here that sends the request, but the problem is that it never execute this code. I think we we are closer to the find the cause, since we think it has to do with a network problem. We figured there is an F5 reverse-proxy which is not properly set up to handle websockets
The answer didn't make any sense now that I've seen the code that's why I've edited it. I only answered because I could't comment on your question and ask you for the code.
Your calling code seems correct and the server side of things the process of response should be handled automatically by the framework, you only need to return some JSON in the controller method.
I instantiated a copy of the server (just changed the adapters to run it locally) and the server replied to the web socket requests (although I only tested the route '/index').
Normally when the problems are caused by a reverse proxy the socket simply refuses to connect and you can't even send data to server. Does the property "socket.socket.connected" returns true?
The best way to test is to write a small node application with socket.io client and test it in the same machine that the application server is running, then you can exclude network problems.

How to send data to client browsers when a server side change occurs

I have an intranet based CRM application developed in CodeIgniter 2.1 where the application is running on a local Apache server and around 20 clients are accessing it over LAN. This is to be connected to a call center setup where the call center application (running on a separate server) will do a HTTP post with caller's number as well as terminal number of the agent where the call is arriving to a URL of my Codeigniter application. I am using this data to populate a database table of call records.
Now from the terminal number (each terminal has static IP, and a session in Codeigniter is linked to IP as well) I can find out which user (login session) of my application is about to receive the call. I want to find a way out how I can send data from server side (it will be regarding the call like the number who is calling, past call records etc.) to that specific user's browser via AJAX or something similar? The agent's browser needs to display this information sent from server.
Periodic polling from browser by jquery etc. is not possible as the data needs to be updated almost instantaneously and rapid polling up to this extent will lead to high CPU usage at client end as well as extra load on network.
P.S.: I only want to know how to modify the browser data from server end.
In AJAX, asynchronous request/response doesn't involve polling; there's just an open TCP connection and non-blocking I/O. The client makes a request but returns immediately; when the server sends the response, the client is notified. So you can achieve what you want with AJAX's XMLHttpRequest without polling[1]. All you need is a url from which to serve your notifications. You could have one request thread and a general dispatch method, or different urls and different threads for each, depending on how you needed to scale.
[1] Well, to be honest, with very little polling. You'd really need to establish what the session/global timeout was and reissue requests within that time limit.

Ajax vs Comet (not a chat application)

I've developed a web-based application in which a signed in user should send a message to the server telling he is still online every 3 seconds. The message is then processed by the server and a stored procedure is called in Mysql to set the user's status to online.
I've looked in to similar issues in which Comet and Ajax are compared (here or here) but considering that 3 second delay is acceptable and maximum users of 1000 are online in the system, is using Ajax a wise choice or Comet should be used?
For this kind of feature comet is more appropriate:
Your clients send messages (i'm online)
Your server broadcast the processed message (user X is still online)
In an ajax way you are only serving messages to server.
In order to get the "broadcast effect" in an ajax way. You will end up doing something similar to comet but with less efficient bandwidth.
Ajax:
Client send server - i'm in
Server process
Server send back to client list of user in.
In this case every client ask every 3 second the database for the COMPLETE "in" list.
In comet:
Client X send server - i'm in
Server process
Server send back to client S that user X is still online
In this case every client tell the server every 3 second that he is in.
The server send back to every connected client ONLY that x is still in
Comet is just the technique to broadcast back and push messages to client
Ajax is the technique to push client information to the server without having to refresh all the page.
Quoting wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_%28programming%29
Comet is known by several other names, including Ajax Push, Reverse Ajax , Two-way-web, HTTP Streaming,and HTTP server push among others.
So go comet :)
If you do not broadcast anything, then simple Ajax is the best option
In this particular case, since you do not need to send any information from the server to the client(s), I believe Ajax is the more appropriate solution. Every three seconds, the client tells the server it is connected, the database is updated, and you're done.
It could certainly be done using Comet, in which case you would basically ping each registered client to see if it is still connected. But, you would still need to run a query on the database for each client that responds, plus you would still need the client to notify the server on its initial connection. So, it seems to me that Comet would be more trouble than it's worth. The only thing that might make sense is if you could ping each registered client and store the responses in memory, then once all clients have been pinged you can run one single query to update all of their statuses. This would give you the added bonus of knowing as soon as a client disconnects as opposed to waiting for a timeout. Unfortunately, that is beyond the scope of my expertise with Comet so, at this point, I can't help to actually implement it.

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