Socket.io

Web Sockets

• A feature built on top of TCP.
• It facilitates a maintainable client <--> server relationship.

Socket.io

• Socket.io sometimes uses web sockets, ut is more or less just a representation of the relationship that sockets try and produce.
• Socket.io is responsible for maintaining its own connection, not simply a socket connection.

What does Socket.io do?

• It allows us to emit messages to any connection clients.
• Benefits:
  • We can now create our own events.
  • We can also set up namespaces. These are similar to endpoints it HTTP/REST.
  • We no longer have to deal with buffers. Socket.io handles all of the encoding of our data.
  • We can also have opt in rooms. These are similar to prototypes of a class / branches of an endpoint.