Socket.io - andrewkyllo-401-advanced-javascript/seattle-javascript-401d34 GitHub Wiki

Web Sockets

• A communication protocol which provides bidirectional communication between the client ad the server over a tcp connection.
• Web sockets remain open all the time.
• Waits for client or server to terminate request

Socket.io

• A library which enables real-time and full duplex communication between the client and the web servers
• Uses websocket protocol to provide the interface
• Client Side: it is the library that runs inside the browser
• Server Side: It is the library for Node.js

Connections

• With TCP, you connect directly to a server with a keep-alive type of connection
• With Socket-io you connect to a server over HTTP. THe session is kept alive through itsinternal use of the websocket protocol

Messaging

• Standard node events are sent with emit() and received with on()