How to remove io.on('connection') listener?

Question

I have some code for a socket.io server along the lines of:

var io = require("socket.io");
io = io(server);
io.on('connection', connectionHandler);

This all works great. I'm wondering how I can remove that connection listener - unlike socket, it appears that

io.removeListener('connection', connectionHandler);

doesn't work (I get "io.removeListener is not a function"). How do I remove that on('connection') listener?

If it matters, I'm working on a socket.io room managing library, and am writing a reset function. I'm using the reset function between test suites with Mocha. I'd like the reset function to remove the on connection listener.

Socket.io version is 1.3.7

Possibly a duplicate to [this Thread](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23092624/socket-io-removing-specific-listener) — Clijsters, Oct 23 '15 at 14:45
That's referring to the socket - I'm wondering about how to do the same for the server. — thatnerd2, Oct 23 '15 at 14:46
Isn't that equivalent to closing the connection ? http://stackoverflow.com/a/7492995/2619658 — Kaya Toast, Oct 23 '15 at 14:51
io.off() doesn't exist, but io.close() does, so that shuts down the server. But then, how do I reopen the connection? — thatnerd2, Oct 23 '15 at 16:19

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 23 '15 at 17:41

If you work through how socket.io processes .on(), one can figure out that it's using the default top-level namespace as the EventEmitter and io.on() just forwards the function call to the top-level namespace object. So, you can get the top level namespace object and then just call any EventEmitter method on it like this:

var nsp = io.of('/');
nsp.removeListener('connection', connectionHandler);

I have verified that this works in my own test app and stepped through it in the debugger to verify it was working as expected.

How to remove io.on('connection') listener?

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