A PHP Websocket server is included in Symbiose, with several endpoints:

• An API endpoint to send almost all data through Websockets
• A [PeerJS server](PeerJS server)
• A normal HTTP server: you can browse directly to your server's URL in order to use Symbiose. Thus, when using the Websocket server, you don't need an additional port with another web server for normal HTTP requests (e.g. Apache or Nginx).

Starting the server

You can start the Websocket server either automatically or manually.

Start the server automatically

Requirements: an Unix-like OS, with nohup and kill available.

Go to System preferences > WebSocket server > Configuration. Here you can change some settings such as the server port, and you can start the server.

By default, the server will start on port 9000.

Server logs are available in /var/log/websocket-server.log.

Start the server manually

Sometimes, it is more convenient to start the server manually, just like a Node.js server for instance. You can do so by running this command:

php sbin/server.php

You can now open http://localhost:9000 to use Symbiose.

You can override the server port when launching the server : php sbin/server.php -p 8080.

Configuration

All configuration is stored in /etc/websocket-server.json. Available options:

• enabled: set to true to enable the websocket server
• autoStart: set to true to automatically start the websocket server if it is down
• hostname: allowed origin. Set to * to allow any origin.
• port: the websocket server port. Defaults to 9000. Set to null to detect the port from the URL.
• protocol: the server protocol, can be ws or wss for a secure connection. Set to null to detect the protocol from the URL.

SSL support

SSL is not supported for now. Nevertheless, you can use a reverse proxy to enable SSL. Here is an example with Nginx: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22493646/ratchet-nginx-ssl-secure-websocket

It's also possible with Apache: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-apache-http-server-as-reverse-proxy-using-mod_proxy-extension

Node.js reverse proxy

Uses http-proxy.

var fs = require('fs');
var httpProxy = require('http-proxy');

httpProxy.createServer({
  target: {
    host: 'localhost',
    port: 9000
  },
  ssl: {
    key: fs.readFileSync('certificate.pem', 'utf8'),
    cert: fs.readFileSync('certificate.pem', 'utf8')
  },
  ws: true
}).listen(3000);

console.log('Proxy listening on port 3000');

Generating certificates:

openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -days 730 -x509 -nodes -keyout certificate.key -out certificate.cert
cat certificate.cert certificate.key  > certificate.pem

Installing http-proxy:

npm install http-proxy