Joining same room more then once and clients in a room - socket.io

I'm trying to figure out what happens if the clients emits to join the same room more then once, To test and find answer on this I wanted initially to find out how many clients room has after same clients send more then one emit for joining the room, but Rooms chapter in wiki https://github.com/Automattic/socket.io/wiki/Rooms is outdated. When I try to use "io.sockets.clients('room')" I get error "Object # has no method 'clients'".
So I got two questions:
1. what happens if client tries to join same room more then once? Will he get emits for that room for each time he has tried to join?
2. How can I find out which clients are in a room?
Im using socket.io v1.0.2

I got an answer on this question at socket.io github.
As per this line of code, the socket will receive emits only once. The socket is added to a room only once, and if another attempt is made for the same socket to join the room, this attempt will be ignored.
There is currently no public API for getting the clients, and there is some discussion ongoing in #1428. If you really need to get them, for some reason, you can fetch the actual clients from the adapter, assuming you are not using the redis adapter like so:
socket.join('test room');
var clients = io.sockets.adapter.rooms['test room'];
console.log(clients);
for (var clientId in clients) {
console.log(io.sockets.connected[clientId]);
}

Fixed getting clients in a room at socket.io ~1.4.5 like this:
socket.join('test room');
var room = io.sockets.adapter.rooms['test room'];
console.log(room);
for (var socketId in room.sockets) {
console.log(io.sockets.connected[socketId]);
}

Its working fine and does not gives any error,it ignores the second request for joining the room from that socket which is already in the room.
I have actually tried and implemented a solution where
when user click on message notification it joins that specific room from which the notification came and, and when he sends very first message he again join that specific room (It is because I have build a Chat-Directive in AngularJS).
Client Side
1) User Open Notification
Socket.emit('JoinRoomWithThsID', notification.ConversationID);
2) user Sends First Message in that room
Socket.emit('patientChatRoomMessage', adminmessage);

Related

How to architecture a web-socket server with client subscription of specific responses in Phoenix?

I'm developing a web-socket server that I need to send real-time messages using Phoenix Framework to my clients.
The basic idea of my web-socket server is that a client can subscribe for some type of information and expect to receive only it, other clients would never receive it unless they subscribe to it too, the same information is broadcasted to every (and only) client subscribed to it in real-time.
Also, these information are separated in categories and sub categories, going down to 4 levels of categories.
So, for example, let's say I have 2 types of category information CatA, and CatB, each category can have sub categories, so CatA can have CatA.SubCatA and CatA.SubCatB sub categories, each sub categories can also have other subcategories and so on.
These information are generated by services, one for each root category (they handle all the information for the subcategories too), so we have CatAService and CatBService. These services needs to run as the server starts, always generating new information and broadcasting it to anyone that is subscribed to it.
Now, I have clients that will try to subscribe to these information, my solution for now is to have a channel for each information type available, so a client can join a channel to receive information of the channel's type.
For that I have something like that in the js code:
let channel = socket.channel("CatA:SubCatA:SubSubCatA", {})
channel.join()
channel.on("new_info", (payload) => { ... }
In this case, I would have a channel that all clients interested in SubSubCatA from SubCatA from CatA can join and a service for CatA that would generate and broadcast the information for all it's sub categories and so on.
I'm not sure if I was able to explain exactly what I want, but if something is not clear, please tell me what so I can better explain it, also, I made this (very bad) image as an example of how all the communication would happen https://ibb.co/fANKPb .
Also, note that I could only have one channel for each category and broadcast all the subcategories information for everyone that joined that category channel, but I'm very concerned about performance and network bandwidth, So my objective is to only send the information to only the clients that requested it.
Doing some tests here, it seems that If the client joins the channel as shown in the js code above, I can do this:
MyServerWeb.Endpoint.broadcast "CatA:SubCatA:SubSubCatA", "new_info", message
and that client (and all the other clients listening to that channel, but only then) will receive that message.
So, my question is divided in two parts, one is more generic and is what are the correct ways to achieve what I described above.
The second is if the solution I already came up is a good way to solve this since I'm not sure if the length of the string "CatA:SubCatA:SubSubCatA" creates an overhead when the server parses it or if there is some other limitation that I'm not aware.
Thanks!
You have to make separate channels for each class of clients and depending upon the ids which you are getting, you can broadcast the messages after checking about the clients joining the channel
def join("groups:" <> group_slug, _params, socket) do
%{team_id: team_id, current_user: user} = socket.assigns
case Repo.get_by(Group, slug: group_slug, team_id: team_id) do
nil ->
{:error, %{message: "group not found"}}
group ->
case GroupAuthorization.can_view?(group.id, user.id) do
true ->
messages = MessageQueries.group_latest_messages(group.id, user)
json = MessageView.render("index.json", %{messages: messages})
send self(), :after_join
{:ok, %{messages: json}, assign(socket, :group, group)}
false ->
{:error, %{message: "unauthorized"}}
end
end
end
This is an example of sending messages only to the users in groups which are subscribed and joined to the group. Hope this helps.

How does socket.io-redis deal with rooms?

If I have multiple processes and am using socket.io-redis, when I do io.to(room).emit(namespace, message); is this handled seamlessly and efficiently? Or am I misunderstanding socket.io-redis's role?
Hi in short as far as I know about this is-
io.to('room').emit('namespace', 'message');
Means, sending message named 'namespace' with value 'message' to all clients in 'room' channel, including sender.
Detail info (found in here)-
// send to current request socket client
socket.emit('message', "this is a test");// Hasn't changed
// sending to all clients, include sender
io.sockets.emit('message', "this is a test"); // Old way, still compatible
io.emit('message', 'this is a test');// New way, works only in 1.x
// sending to all clients except sender
socket.broadcast.emit('message', "this is a test");// Hasn't changed
// sending to all clients in 'game' room(channel) except sender
socket.broadcast.to('game').emit('message', 'nice game');// Hasn't changed
// sending to all clients in 'game' room(channel), include sender
io.sockets.in('game').emit('message', 'cool game');// Old way, DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE
io.in('game').emit('message', 'cool game');// New way
io.to('game').emit('message', 'cool game');// New way, "in" or "to" are the exact same: "And then simply use to or in (they are the same) when broadcasting or emitting:" from http://socket.io/docs/rooms-and-namespaces/
// sending to individual socketid, socketid is like a room
io.sockets.socket(socketid).emit('message', 'for your eyes only');// Old way, DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE
socket.broadcast.to(socketid).emit('message', 'for your eyes only');// New way
Even more can be found here.
Basic-
Actually the thing is your question is so sort that it is very difficult for others to understand what u exactly need. So, I assume u need to know basic concepts behind this also. So I am adding this part also for your kind info.
The concept here with socket.io with Redis is u should manage connection with socket and store the data in redis as DB.
Redis normally used for applying a layer upon DB (or caching database) so that some data can be stored for a time interval. So between that time, if any query is needed, data will come from Redis, not from DB query.
This system is applied for performance tuning so that your system can handle a huge load at the same time.
In your case, u can cache data for a short time interval for sending the messages through socket.io.
More can be found here-
http://notjoshmiller.com/socket-io-rooms-and-redis/
http://goldfirestudios.com/blog/136/Horizontally-Scaling-Node.js-and-WebSockets-with-Redis
https://github.com/socketio/socket.io-redis/issues/98
Think this answer will surely help u.

Websocket best practice for groups chat / one websocket for all groups or one websocket per group?

I have to implement a chat application using websocket, users will chat via groups, there can be thousands of groups and a user can be in multiple groups. I'm thinking about 2 solutions:
[1] for each group chat, I create a websocket endpoint (using camel-atmosphere-websocket), users in the same group can subscribe to the group endpoint and send/receive message over that endpoint. it means there can be thousands of websocket endpoints. Client side (let's say iPhone) has to subscribes to multiple wbesocket endpoints. is this a good practice?
[2] I just create one websocket endpoint for all groups. Client side just subscribes to this endpoint and I manage the messages distribution myself on server: get group members, pick the websocket of each member from list of connected websockets then write the message to each member via websocket.
Which solution is better in term of performance and easy to implement on both client and server?
Thanks.
EDIT 2015-10-06
I chose the second approach and did a test with jetty websocket client, I use camel atmosphere websocket on server side. On client side, I create websocket connections to server in threads. There was a problem with jetty that I can just create around 160 websocket connections (it means around 160 threads). The result is that I almost see no difference when the number of clients increases from 1 to 160.
Yes, 160 is not a big number, but I think I will do more test when I actually see the performance problem, for now, I'm ok with second approach.
If you are interested in the test code, here it is:
http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/documentation/current/jetty-websocket-client-api.html#d0e22545
I think second approach will be better to use for performance. I am using the same for my application, but it is still in testing phase so can't comment about the real time performance. Now its running for 10-15 groups and working fine. In my app, there is similar condition like you in which user can chat based on group. I am handling the the group creation on server side using node.js. Here is the code to create group, but it is for my app specific condition. Just pasting here for the reference. Getting homeState and userId from front-end. Creating group based on the homeState. This code is only for example, it won't work for you. To improve performance you can use clustering.
this.ConnectionObject = function(homeState, userId, ws) {
this.homeState = homeState;
this.userId = userId;
this.wsConnection = ws;
},
this.createConnectionEntry = function(homeState, userId,
ws) {
var connObject = new ws.thisRefer.ConnectionObject(homeState, userId,
ws);
var connectionEntryList = null;
if (ws.thisRefer.connectionMap[homeState] != undefined) {
connectionEntryList = ws.thisRefer.connectionMap[homeState];
} else {
connectionEntryList = new Array();
}
connectionEntryList.push(connObject);
console.log(connectionEntryList.length);
ws.thisRefer.connectionMap[homeState] = connectionEntryList;
ws.thisRefer.connecteduserIdMap[userId] = "";
}
Browsers implement a restriction on the numbers of websocket that can be opened by the same tab. You can't rely on being able to create as many connection as possible. Go for solution #2

Pubnub chat application with storage

I'm looking to develop a chat application with Pubnub where I want to make sure all the chat messages that are send is been stored in the database and also want to send messages in chat.
I found out that I can use the Parse with pubnub to provide storage options, But I'm not sure how to setup those two in a way where the messages and images send in the chat are been stored in the database.
Anyone have done this before with pubnub and parse? Are there any other easy options available to use with pubnub instead of using parse?
Sutha,
What you are seeking is not a trivial solution unless you are talking about a limited number of end users. So I wouldn't say there are no "easy" solutions, but there are solutions.
The reason is your server would need to listen (subscribe) to every chat channel that is active and store the messages being sent into your database. Imagine your app scaling to 1 million users (doesn't even need to get that big, but that number should help you realize how this can get tricky to scale where several server instances are listening to channels in a non-overlapping manner or with overlap but using a server queue implementation and de-duping messages).
That said, yes, there are PubNub customers that have implemented such a solution - Parse not being the key to making this happen, by the way.
You have three basic options for implementing this:
Implement a solution that will allow many instances of your server to subscribe to all of the channels as they become active and store the messages as they come in. There are a lot of details to making this happen so if you are not up to this then this is not likely where you want to go.
There is a way to monitor all channels that become active or inactive with PubNub Presence webhooks (enable Presence on your keys). You would use this to keep a list of all channels that your server would use to pull history (enable Storage & Playback on your keys) from in an on-demand (not completely realtime) fashion.
For every channel that goes active or inactive, your server will receive these events via the REST call (and endpoint that you implement on your server - your Parse server in this case):
channel active: record "start chat" timetoken in your Parse db
channel inactive: record "end chat" timetoken in your Parse db
the inactive event is the kickoff for a process that uses start/end timetokens that you recorded for that channel to get history from for channel from PubNub: pubnub.history({channel: channelName, start:startTT, end:endTT})
you will need to iterate on this history call until you receive < 100 messages (100 is the max number of messages you can retrieve at a time)
as you retrieve these messages you will save them to your Parse db
New Presence Webhooks have been added:
We now have webhooks for all presence events: join, leave, timeout, state-change.
Finally, you could just save each message to Parse db on success of every pubnub.publish call. I am not a Parse expert and barely know all of its capabilities but I believe they have some sort or store local then sync to cloud db option (like StackMob when that was a product), but even if not, you will save msg to Parse cloud db directly.
The code would look something like this (not complete, likely errors, figure it out or ask PubNub support for details) in your JavaScript client (on the browser).
var pubnub = PUBNUB({
publish_key : your_pub_key,
subscribe_key : your_sub_key
});
var msg = ... // get the message form your UI text box or whatever
pubnub.publish({
// this is some variable you set up when you enter a chat room
channel: chat_channel,
message: msg
callback: function(event){
// DISCLAIMER: code pulled from [Parse example][4]
// but there are some object creation details
// left out here and msg object is not
// fully fleshed out in this sample code
var ChatMessage = Parse.Object.extend("ChatMessage");
var chatMsg = new ChatMessage();
chatMsg.set("message", msg);
chatMsg.set("user", uuid);
chatMsg.set("channel", chat_channel);
chatMsg.set("timetoken", event[2]);
// this ChatMessage object can be
// whatever you want it to be
chatMsg.save();
}
error: function (error) {
// Handle error here, like retry until success, for example
console.log(JSON.stringify(error));
}
});
You might even just store the entire set of publishes (on both ends of the conversation) based on time interval, number of publishes or size of total data but be careful because either user could exit the chat and the browser without notice and you will fail to save. So the per publish save is probably best practice if a bit noisy.
I hope you find one of these techniques as a means to get started in the right direction. There are details left out so I expect you will have follow up questions.
Just some other links that might be helpful:
http://blog.parse.com/learn/building-a-killer-webrtc-video-chat-app-using-pubnub-parse/
http://www.pubnub.com/blog/realtime-collaboration-sync-parse-api-pubnub/
https://www.pubnub.com/knowledge-base/discussion/293/how-do-i-publish-a-message-from-parse
And we have a PubNub Parse SDK, too. :)

Pusher App Client Events

I'm writing a multiplayer chess game, and using Pusher for the websocket server part.
Anyways, if I have a list of users, and I select any one of them and challenge them, how do I send challenge to just that one user? I know I would use the client event like:
channel.trigger("client-challenge_member1", {some : "data"});
But this event would have to have already been created I think. So do I create this event dynamically after each member subscribes? as possibly in:
channel.bind("pusher:subscribed_completed", function(member) // not sure of correct syntax but...
{
channel.bind("client-challenge_" + member.memberID, function(data)
{
alert(data.Name + " is challenging you.");
});
});
I would think there'd be a overloaded method for trigger, like:
channel.trigger(eventName, data, memberID)
But I cannot see anything like this. Any ideas? Thanks.
I ran into this problem on my application. At this time Pusher does not provide methods for sending events to a specific user. I think the approach that you mentioned would work for your situation. For my application I had each user subscribe to a channel with their user id as the channel id, then I could send messages to a single user through that channel.
client = new Pusher(PUSHER_API_KEY);
channel = client.subscribe(user_id);
channel.bind('my_event',function(data){
//Do stuff
});
I talked this approach over with the pusher team and they assured me there was no real overhead in having the extra channels. The new Pusher() command is the code that creates a new socket connection so you don't have to worry about extra sockets per channel or anything like that. Hope this helps.
I'm from Pusher. As Braden says, you can easily make a channel per user. This is more efficient than having the user id in the event name which means you spam everyone with useless messages.
This is an area we want to improve on further, so thanks for the feedback.
If you're able to consider another service, Beaconpush has the ability to send messages to a specific user.
From their site:
POST /1.0.0/[API key]/users/[user]

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