Hi all I'm trying to send a javascript object through websockets:
the faye-websockets documentation says:
send(message) accepts either a String or a Buffer and sends a text or binary message over the connection to the other peer.
server side I'm using node and faye.
var WebSocket = require('faye-websocket');
var http = require('http');
var server = http.createServer();
server.addListener('upgrade', function(request, socket, head) {
var ws = new WebSocket(request, socket, head);
ws.send({topic:'handshake', data:'sdf487rgiuh7'});
});
server.listen(8000);
client side:
<script>
var ws = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:8000');
ws.onmessage = function(e) {
console.log(e.data); //prints [Object object] string and not the object
};
</script>
what is my error? Thanks
WebSockets support sending and receiving: strings, typed arrays (ArrayBuffer) and Blobs. Javascript objects must be serialized to one of the above types before sending.
To send an object as a string you can use the builtin JSON support:
ws.send(JSON.stringify(object));
To send an object as a typed array you can use a javascript BSON library such as this one:
ws.send(BSON.serialize(object));
When you receive a WebSocket message you will need to deserialize it.
To deserialize a JSON string from a WebSocket message:
ws.onmessage = function (e) {
var object = JSON.parse(e.data);
...
};
If you are using binary messages over WebSocket, then first you should set the binaryType attribute in order to receive all binary messages as typed arrays:
ws.binaryType = "arraybuffer";
Then the deserialization will look like this:
ws.onmessage = function (e) {
var object = BSON.deserialize(e.data);
...
};
Here is a blog post about using BSON in Javascript;
Client:
const bson = new BSON();
ws.binaryType = 'arraybuffer';
ws.onmessage = function(event) {
console.log(bson.deserialize(Buffer.from(event.data)));
}
Server:
const data = bson.serialize({ ... });
ws.send(data);
I'm basically working with Socket.IO, but it looks like you need to stringify your data in the server and parse it in the client like so:
in the server:
ws.send(JSON.stringify({topic:'handshake', data:'sdf487rgiuh7'}));
in the client:
console.log(JSON.parse(e.data));