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https://github.com/faye/faye-websocket-ruby

Standards-compliant WebSocket client and server
https://github.com/faye/faye-websocket-ruby

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Standards-compliant WebSocket client and server

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README 

        
# faye-websocket



This is a general-purpose WebSocket implementation extracted from the

[Faye](http://faye.jcoglan.com) project. It provides classes for easily building

WebSocket servers and clients in Ruby. It does not provide a server itself, but

rather makes it easy to handle WebSocket connections within an existing

[Rack](http://rack.github.io/) application. It does not provide any abstraction

other than the standard [WebSocket

API](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/comms.html#network).



It also provides an abstraction for handling

[EventSource](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/comms.html#server-sent-events)

connections, which are one-way connections that allow the server to push data to

the client. They are based on streaming HTTP responses and can be easier to

access via proxies than WebSockets.



The following web servers are supported. Other servers that implement the

`rack.hijack` API should also work.



- [Goliath](http://postrank-labs.github.com/goliath/)

- [Phusion Passenger](https://www.phusionpassenger.com/) >= 4.0 with nginx >= 1.4

- [Puma](http://puma.io/) >= 2.0

- [Rainbows](http://rainbows.bogomips.org/)

- [Thin](http://code.macournoyer.com/thin/)



## Installation



```

$ gem install faye-websocket

```



## Handling WebSocket connections in Rack



You can handle WebSockets on the server side by listening for requests using the

`Faye::WebSocket.websocket?` method, and creating a new socket for the request.

This socket object exposes the usual WebSocket methods for receiving and sending

messages. For example this is how you'd implement an echo server:



```ruby

# app.rb

require 'faye/websocket'



App = lambda do |env|

  if Faye::WebSocket.websocket?(env)

    ws = Faye::WebSocket.new(env)



    ws.on :message do |event|

      ws.send(event.data)

    end



    ws.on :close do |event|

      p [:close, event.code, event.reason]

      ws = nil

    end



    # Return async Rack response

    ws.rack_response



  else

    # Normal HTTP request

    [200, { 'Content-Type' => 'text/plain' }, ['Hello']]

  end

end

```



Note that under certain circumstances (notably a draft-76 client connecting

through an HTTP proxy), the WebSocket handshake will not be complete after you

call `Faye::WebSocket.new` because the server will not have received the entire

handshake from the client yet. In this case, calls to `ws.send` will buffer the

message in memory until the handshake is complete, at which point any buffered

messages will be sent to the client.



If you need to detect when the WebSocket handshake is complete, you can use the

`onopen` event.



If the connection's protocol version supports it, you can call `ws.ping()` to

send a ping message and wait for the client's response. This method takes a

message string, and an optional callback that fires when a matching pong message

is received. It returns `true` if and only if a ping message was sent. If the

client does not support ping/pong, this method sends no data and returns

`false`.



```ruby

ws.ping 'Mic check, one, two' do

  # fires when pong is received

end

```



## Using the WebSocket client



The client supports both the plain-text `ws` protocol and the encrypted `wss`

protocol, and has exactly the same interface as a socket you would use in a web

browser. On the wire it identifies itself as `hybi-13`.



```ruby

require 'faye/websocket'

require 'eventmachine'



EM.run {

  ws = Faye::WebSocket::Client.new('ws://www.example.com/')



  ws.on :open do |event|

    p [:open]

    ws.send('Hello, world!')

  end



  ws.on :message do |event|

    p [:message, event.data]

  end



  ws.on :close do |event|

    p [:close, event.code, event.reason]

    ws = nil

  end

}

```



The WebSocket client also lets you inspect the status and headers of the

handshake response via its `status` and `headers` methods.



To connect via a proxy, set the `proxy` option to the HTTP origin of the proxy,

including any authorization information and custom headers you require:



```rb

ws = Faye::WebSocket::Client.new('ws://www.example.com/', [], {

  :proxy => {

    :origin  => 'http://username:[email protected]',

    :headers => { 'User-Agent' => 'ruby' }

  }

})

```



## Subprotocol negotiation



The WebSocket protocol allows peers to select and identify the application

protocol to use over the connection. On the client side, you can set which

protocols the client accepts by passing a list of protocol names when you

construct the socket:



```ruby

ws = Faye::WebSocket::Client.new('ws://www.example.com/', ['irc', 'amqp'])

```



On the server side, you can likewise pass in the list of protocols the server

supports after the other constructor arguments:



```ruby

ws = Faye::WebSocket.new(env, ['irc', 'amqp'])

```



If the client and server agree on a protocol, both the client- and server-side

socket objects expose the selected protocol through the `ws.protocol` property.



## Protocol extensions



faye-websocket is based on the

[websocket-extensions](https://github.com/faye/websocket-extensions-ruby)

framework that allows extensions to be negotiated via the

`Sec-WebSocket-Extensions` header. To add extensions to a connection, pass an

array of extensions to the `:extensions` option. For example, to add

[permessage-deflate](https://github.com/faye/permessage-deflate-ruby):



```rb

require 'permessage_deflate'



ws = Faye::WebSocket.new(env, [], :extensions => [PermessageDeflate])

```



## Initialization options



Both the server- and client-side classes allow an options hash to be passed in

at initialization time, for example:



```ruby

ws = Faye::WebSocket.new(env, protocols, options)

ws = Faye::WebSocket::Client.new(url, protocols, options)

```



`protocols` as an array of subprotocols as described above, or `nil`. `options`

is an optional hash containing any of these keys:



- `:extensions` - an array of

  [websocket-extensions](https://github.com/faye/websocket-extensions-ruby)

  compatible extensions, as described above

- `:headers` - a hash containing key-value pairs representing HTTP headers to be

  sent during the handshake process

- `:max_length` - the maximum allowed size of incoming message frames, in bytes.

  The default value is `2^26 - 1`, or 1 byte short of 64 MiB.

- `:ping` - an integer that sets how often the WebSocket should send ping

  frames, measured in seconds

- `:tls` - a hash containing key-value pairs for specifying TLS parameters.

  These are passed along to EventMachine and you can find

  [more details here](http://rubydoc.info/gems/eventmachine/EventMachine%2FConnection%3Astart_tls)



### Secure sockets



Starting with version 0.11.0, `Faye::WebSocket::Client` will verify the server

certificate for `wss` connections. This is not the default behaviour for

EventMachine's TLS interface, and so our defaults for the `:tls` option are a

little different.



First, `:verify_peer` is enabled by default. Our implementation checks that the

chain of certificates sent by the server is trusted by your root certificates,

and that the final certificate's hostname matches the hostname in the request

URL.



By default, we use your system's root certificate store by invoking

`OpenSSL::X509::Store#set_default_paths`. If you want to use a different set of

root certificates, you can pass them via the `:root_cert_file` option, which

takes a path or an array of paths to the certificates you want to use.



```ruby

ws = Faye::WebSocket::Client.new('wss://example.com/', [], :tls => {

  :root_cert_file => ['path/to/certificate.pem']

})

```



If you want to switch off certificate verification altogether, then set

`:verify_peer` to `false`.



```ruby

ws = Faye::WebSocket::Client.new('wss://example.com/', [], :tls => {

  :verify_peer => false

})

```



## WebSocket API



Both the server- and client-side `WebSocket` objects support the following API:



- **`on(:open) { |event| }`** fires when the socket connection is established.

  Event has no attributes.

- **`on(:message) { |event| }`** fires when the socket receives a message. Event

  has one attribute, **`data`**, which is either a `String` (for text frames) or

  an `Array` of unsigned integers, i.e. integers in the range `0..255` (for

  binary frames).

- **`on(:error) { |event| }`** fires when there is a protocol error due to bad

  data sent by the other peer. This event is purely informational, you do not

  need to implement error recovery.

- **`on(:close) { |event| }`** fires when either the client or the server closes

  the connection. Event has two optional attributes, **`code`** and

  **`reason`**, that expose the status code and message sent by the peer that

  closed the connection.

- **`send(message)`** accepts either a `String` or an `Array` of byte-sized

  integers and sends a text or binary message over the connection to the other

  peer; binary data must be encoded as an `Array`.

- **`ping(message, &callback)`** sends a ping frame with an optional message and

  fires the callback when a matching pong is received.

- **`close(code, reason)`** closes the connection, sending the given status code

  and reason text, both of which are optional.

- **`version`** is a string containing the version of the `WebSocket` protocol

  the connection is using.

- **`protocol`** is a string (which may be empty) identifying the subprotocol

  the socket is using.



## Handling EventSource connections in Rack



EventSource connections provide a very similar interface, although because they

only allow the server to send data to the client, there is no `onmessage` API.

EventSource allows the server to push text messages to the client, where each

message has an optional event-type and ID.



```ruby

# app.rb

require 'faye/websocket'



App = lambda do |env|

  if Faye::EventSource.eventsource?(env)

    es = Faye::EventSource.new(env)

    p [:open, es.url, es.last_event_id]



    # Periodically send messages

    loop = EM.add_periodic_timer(1) { es.send('Hello') }



    es.on :close do |event|

      EM.cancel_timer(loop)

      es = nil

    end



    # Return async Rack response

    es.rack_response



  else

    # Normal HTTP request

    [200, { 'Content-Type' => 'text/plain' }, ['Hello']]

  end

end

```



The `send` method takes two optional parameters, `:event` and `:id`. The default

event-type is `'message'` with no ID. For example, to send a `notification`

event with ID `99`:



```ruby

es.send('Breaking News!', :event => 'notification', :id => '99')

```



The `EventSource` object exposes the following properties:



- **`url`** is a string containing the URL the client used to create the

  EventSource.

- **`last_event_id`** is a string containing the last event ID received by the

  client. You can use this when the client reconnects after a dropped connection

  to determine which messages need resending.



When you initialize an EventSource with `Faye::EventSource.new`, you can pass

configuration options after the `env` parameter. Available options are:



- **`:headers`** is a hash containing custom headers to be set on the

  EventSource response.

- **`:retry`** is a number that tells the client how long (in seconds) it should

  wait after a dropped connection before attempting to reconnect.

- **`:ping`** is a number that tells the server how often (in seconds) to send

  'ping' packets to the client to keep the connection open, to defeat timeouts

  set by proxies. The client will ignore these messages.



For example, this creates a connection that allows access from any origin, pings

every 15 seconds and is retryable every 10 seconds if the connection is broken:



```ruby

es = Faye::EventSource.new(es,

  :headers => { 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' => '*' },

  :ping    => 15,

  :retry   => 10

)

```



You can send a ping message at any time by calling `es.ping`. Unlike WebSocket

the client does not send a response to this; it is merely to send some data over

the wire to keep the connection alive.



## Running your socket application



The following describes how to run a WebSocket application using all our

supported web servers.



### Running the app with Thin



If you use Thin to serve your application you need to include this line after

loading `faye/websocket`:



```ruby

Faye::WebSocket.load_adapter('thin')

```



Thin can be started via the command line if you've set up a `config.ru` file for

your application:



```

$ thin start -R config.ru -p 9292

```



Or, you can use `rackup`. In development mode, this adds middlewares that don't

work with async apps, so you must start it in production mode:



```

$ rackup config.ru -s thin -E production -p 9292

```



It can also be started using the `Rack::Handler` interface common to many Ruby

servers. You can configure Thin further in a block passed to `run`:



```ruby

require 'eventmachine'

require 'rack'

require 'thin'

require './app'



Faye::WebSocket.load_adapter('thin')



thin = Rack::Handler.get('thin')



thin.run(App, :Port => 9292) do |server|

  # You can set options on the server here, for example to set up SSL:

  server.ssl_options = {

    :private_key_file => 'path/to/ssl.key',

    :cert_chain_file  => 'path/to/ssl.crt'

  }

  server.ssl = true

end

```



### Running the app with Passenger



faye-websocket requires either Passenger for Nginx or Passenger Standalone.

[Apache doesn't work well with WebSockets at this time](https://github.com/phusion/passenger/issues/1202).

You do not need any special configuration to make faye-websocket work, it

should work out of the box on Passenger provided you use at least Passenger

4.0.



However, you do need to insert the following code in `config.ru` for optimal

WebSocket performance in Passenger. This is

[documented in the Passenger manual](https://www.phusionpassenger.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Nginx.html#tuning_sse_websockets).



```ruby

if defined?(PhusionPassenger)

  PhusionPassenger.advertised_concurrency_level = 0

end

```



Run your app on Passenger for Nginx by creating a virtual host entry which

points to your app's "public" directory:



```

server {

  listen 9292;

  server_name yourdomain.local;

  root /path-to-your-app/public;

  passenger_enabled on;

}

```



Or run your app on Passenger Standalone:



```

$ passenger start -p 9292

```



More information can be found on [the Passenger

website](https://www.phusionpassenger.com/support).



### Running the app with Puma



Puma has a command line interface for starting your application:



```

$ puma config.ru -p 9292

```



Or, you can use `rackup`. In development mode, this adds middlewares that don't

work with async apps, so you must start it in production mode:



```

$ rackup config.ru -s puma -E production -p 9292

```



### Running the app with Rainbows



If you're using version 4.4 or lower of Rainbows, you need to run it with the

EventMachine backend and enable the adapter. Put this in your `rainbows.conf`

file:



```ruby

Rainbows! { use :EventMachine }

```



And make sure you load the adapter in your application:



```ruby

Faye::WebSocket.load_adapter('rainbows')

```



Version 4.5 of Rainbows does not need this adapter.



You can run your `config.ru` file from the command line. Again, `Rack::Lint`

will complain unless you put the application in production mode.



```

$ rainbows config.ru -c path/to/rainbows.conf -E production -p 9292

```



### Running the app with Goliath



If you use Goliath to server your application you need to include this line

after loading `faye/websocket`:



```ruby

Faye::WebSocket.load_adapter('goliath')

```



Goliath can be made to run arbitrary Rack apps by delegating to them from a

`Goliath::API` instance. A simple server looks like this:



```ruby

require 'goliath'

require './app'

Faye::WebSocket.load_adapter('goliath')



class EchoServer < Goliath::API

  def response(env)

    App.call(env)

  end

end

```



`Faye::WebSocket` can also be used inline within a Goliath app:



```ruby

require 'goliath'

require 'faye/websocket'

Faye::WebSocket.load_adapter('goliath')



class EchoServer < Goliath::API

  def response(env)

    ws = Faye::WebSocket.new(env)



    ws.on :message do |event|

      ws.send(event.data)

    end



    ws.rack_response

  end

end

```