I was looking for a really simple way to get PHP to send a socket.io message to clients.
This doesn't require any additional PHP libraries - it just uses sockets.
Instead of trying to connect to the websocket interface like so many other solutions, just connect to the node.js server and use .on('data')
to receive the message.
Then, socket.io
can forward it along to clients.
I think many of these bloated solutions attempt to get PHP running websocket protocols.
Why bother?
Detect a connection from your PHP server in Node.js like this:
//You might have something like this - just included to show object setup
var app = express();
var server = http.createServer(app);
var io = require('socket.io').listen(server);
server.on("connection", function(s) {
var ip = s.remoteAddress;
if(ip == "::ffff:127.0.0.1") { //If connection is from our server (localhost)
s.on('data', function(buf) {
var js = JSON.parse(buf);
io.emit(js.msg,js.data); //Send the msg to socket.io clients
});
}
});
Here's the incredibly simple php code - I wrapped it in a function - you may come up with something better.
Note that 8080
is the port to my Node.js server - you may want to change.
function sio_message($message, $data) {
$socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, SOL_TCP);
$result = socket_connect($socket, '127.0.0.1', 8080);
if(!$result) {
die('cannot connect '.socket_strerror(socket_last_error()).PHP_EOL);
}
$bytes = socket_write($socket, json_encode(Array("msg" => $message, "data" => $data)));
socket_close($socket);
}
You can use it like this:
sio_message("chat message","Hello from PHP!");
You can also send arrays which are converted to json and passed along to clients.
sio_message("DataUpdate",Array("Data1" => "something", "Data2" => "something else"));
This is a useful way to "trust" that your clients are getting legitimate messages from the server.
You can also have PHP pass along database updates without having hundreds of clients query the database.
I wish I'd found this sooner - hope this helps!