Understanding websockets in terms of REST and Server vs Client Events

Question

For a while now I have been implementing a RESTful API in the design of my project because in my case it is very useful for others to be able to interact with the data in a consistent format (and I find REST to be a clean way of handling requests). I am now trying to not only have my current REST API for my resources, but the ability to expose some pieces of information via a bidirectional websocket connection.

Upon searching for a good .net library to use that implements the websocket protocol, I did find out about SignalR. There was a few problems I had with it (maybe specific to my project?)

I want to be able to initialize a web socket connection through my existing REST API. (I don't know the proper practice to do this, but I figured a custom header would work fine) I would like them (the client) to be able to close the connection and get a http response back (101?) to signify its completion.

The problem I had with SignalR was:

that there was no clean way outside of a hub instance to get a user's connection id and map it to a external controller where the rest call made affects what piece of data gets broadcasted to the specific client (I don't want to use external memory)
the huge reliance on client side code. I really want to make this process as simple to the client and handle the majority of the work on the server side (which I had hoped modifying my current rest api would accomplish). The only responsibility I see of a client is to disconnect peacefully.

So now the question..

Is there a good server side websocket library for .net that implements the latest web socket protocol? The client can use any client library that adheres to the protocol. What is the best practice to incorporate both web socket connections and a restful api?

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

0

ASP.NET supports WebSockets itself if you have IIS8 (only Windows 8/2012 and further). SignalR is just a polyfill,

If you do not have IIS8, you can use external WebSocket frameworks like mine: http://vtortola.github.io/WebSocketListener/

Cheers.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

Community

1
1

answered Jun 05 '15 at 11:29

vtortola

34,709
29
161
263

In a controller that implements ApiController how can we access HttpContext? The request comes in and has a OWIN HttpRequestContext instead. – user3037172 Jun 05 '15 at 15:43
I tried implementing and my HttpContext.Current is always null for some reason. – user3037172 Jun 05 '15 at 16:11
isn't there a `HttpContext` property in `ApiController` ? – vtortola Jun 05 '15 at 19:48
No just HttpRequestContext – user3037172 Jun 05 '15 at 19:50
Wait if you are using OWIN host, that is not IIS. I have no idea how it works with OWIN. – vtortola Jun 05 '15 at 20:15

Understanding websockets in terms of REST and Server vs Client Events

1 Answers1