Integrating NodeJS Realtime with existing PHP Application

Question

I have an existing PHP app running on Apache server.

Question, is it possible to embed say Socket.IO Client-side JS by "Proxy-Pass"-ing to NodeJS server?

Say, I save a key-value pair with PHP in DB, and simultaneously send that message to everyone connected to that channel, the value I just saved.

If I was using NodeJS and Socket.IO/Faye I would embed the client-side JS in the pages served by Apache. But essentially that script comes from Proxy-Pass to NodeJS.

Some light on this would be very kind.

Thanks

Possible to use Redis PubSub? – Maziyar Jul 22 '13 at 12:09 — Maziyar, Jul 22 '13 at 12:09

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:24

5

There is a similar question here:

Accessing socket.io server via Apache served pages

You can achieve this using Apache, but I think it would be better to either connect to Socket.IO directly or use something better for proxying like HAProxy: HAProxy + WebSocket Disconnection

I would choose HAProxy and use a port such as 4000 for example especially for Socket.IO and port 843 for Flash-WebSockets (Socket.IO will check if WebSockets are available in the browser and if they're not SIO can change the transport to Flash-WebSockets; providing your transport order is WS native, WS Flash, etc): https://gist.github.com/1014904 (check HAProxy's config there for port 843).

The reason for choosing HAProxy would be that I could use multiple processes across multiple machines when I need to handle big traffic, and HAProxy is very good at that.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:24

Community

1
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answered Dec 19 '11 at 09:04

alessioalex

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Hey, thank you for your prompt reply. Is it possible to show how to configuring HAProxy for this purpose? – sgomez Dec 19 '11 at 10:05
Take a look at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4360221/haproxy-websocket-disconnection/4737648#4737648 You'll also need to add the flash stuff from here: https://gist.github.com/1496429 – alessioalex Dec 19 '11 at 10:08
Thanks a ton! Socket.IO is working perfect with the above setup! – sgomez Dec 20 '11 at 07:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 22 '12 at 06:51

The first thought is to make a Socket.io client, well it's not that hard except that you'll be busy hacking the Socket.io protocol which is not standard (WebSocket is a standard). I've done something like this in the past but it was a waste of time.

Since Node.Js has a shared scope (The Global Scope) and it's mostly a single process application, you can always make a dedicated HTTP server for non-realtime interacting with Socket.io:

var app = require('http').createServer(function S(req, res){
    res.writeHead(200, {
        'Content-Type': 'text/html'
    });

    res.end('');


    var i;
    var sockets = io.sockets.sockets;
    for (i in sockets) {
        if (sockets.hasOwnProperty(i)) {
            var socket = sockets[i];
            // you have res, and socket so so something with it!
            socket.emit('myevent', {msg: "json is cool :)"});
        }
    }

});

var io = require('socket.io').listen(app);
app.listen(80);

io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {

    socket.on('theirsevent', function (data) {

    });
});

IMHO this is way better that modifying apache with even more modules. This could even work with Python and .Net since it's HTTP.

I think this is much simpler/cleaner that any other solution. ... Unless there is some use case that this solution does not fit.

Integrating NodeJS Realtime with existing PHP Application

2 Answers2