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digitalmars.D - D alternative for node.js's socket.IO?

reply Fleel <email example.com> writes:
Does anyone know of a good D alternative for the socket.IO server 
(https://socket.io)? I would like to transition my server from 
node.js to D, but I can't find any D equivalents to socket.IO. 
(I've seen http://socket.io.dub.pm, but it is dead). Are there 
any good D libraries that can do the same thing as socket.IO? 
Thanks!
Oct 21 2018
next sibling parent reply JN <666total wp.pl> writes:
On Sunday, 21 October 2018 at 20:14:46 UTC, Fleel wrote:

 Does anyone know of a good D alternative for the socket.IO 
 server (https://socket.io)? I would like to transition my 
 server from node.js to D, but I can't find any D equivalents to 
 socket.IO. (I've seen http://socket.io.dub.pm, but it is dead). 
 Are there any good D libraries that can do the same thing as 
 socket.IO? Thanks!


Is std.socket not sufficient? It should be, at least for TCP 
connections. For UDP you could use something like Enet, there are 
Enet bindings in Derelict.
Oct 21 2018
parent reply Fleel <email example.com> writes:
On Sunday, 21 October 2018 at 20:41:41 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 October 2018 at 20:14:46 UTC, Fleel wrote:

 Does anyone know of a good D alternative for the socket.IO 
 server (https://socket.io)? I would like to transition my 
 server from node.js to D, but I can't find any D equivalents 
 to socket.IO. (I've seen http://socket.io.dub.pm, but it is 
 dead). Are there any good D libraries that can do the same 
 thing as socket.IO? Thanks!


 Is std.socket not sufficient? It should be, at least for TCP 
 connections. For UDP you could use something like Enet, there 
 are Enet bindings in Derelict.


Can std.socket provide a realtime connection between the 
client(web browser) and the server, like for a chatroom or 
realtime multiplayer game?
Oct 21 2018
next sibling parent Neia Neutuladh <neia ikeran.org> writes:
On Sun, 21 Oct 2018 20:58:23 +0000, Fleel wrote:

 Can std.socket provide a realtime connection between the client(web
 browser) and the server, like for a chatroom or realtime multiplayer
 game?


Yes, but it will be a bit of work -- you'd need to implement a webserver 
by hand that can upgrade an HTTP request to a websocket. It probably 
wouldn't be *that* hard, but vibe.d already has support for both HTTP 
servers and websockets.

This does mean changing the javascript code, but from what I saw last time 
I used it, socket.io provides little advantage over plain websockets.
Oct 21 2018
prev sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 10/21/18 4:58 PM, Fleel wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 October 2018 at 20:41:41 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 October 2018 at 20:14:46 UTC, Fleel wrote:

 Does anyone know of a good D alternative for the socket.IO server 
 (https://socket.io)? I would like to transition my server from 
 node.js to D, but I can't find any D equivalents to socket.IO. (I've 
 seen http://socket.io.dub.pm, but it is dead). Are there any good D 
 libraries that can do the same thing as socket.IO? Thanks!






I'm afraid I'm not familiar with socket.io, and the homepage doesn't 
seem to tell me much (it doesn't even say whether it uses TCP or UDP). 
But that said, in D, the gold-standard for pretty much *anything* 
related to networking and sockets is Vibe.D: http://vibed.org/

If the network/socket functionality you're looking for exists in D, then 
it's probably in either the standard library or in Vibe.D. If what 
you're looking for doesn't exist, then it can certainly be built on top 
of Vibe.D.


 
 Can std.socket provide a realtime connection between the client(web 
 browser) and the server, like for a chatroom or realtime multiplayer game?


For something like a chatroom, and the vast majority of any networking 
you'd want to do, Vibe.D definitely can. Plain old ordinary TCP is 
perfectly sufficient for something like chatrooms, and Vibe.D supports 
TCP clients/servers very well. For other things, Vibe.D had equally good 
support for UDP. So that alone makes Vibe.D universally useful, plus the 
way its job system works gives you all the benefits of async networking 
code without having to deal with the mess of callback-oriented programming.

For a realtime multiplayer games though, that's notoriously a whole 
different can of worms. For that, you definitely do need UDP (which 
again, Vibe.D supports). But, UDP being what it is, you'd still need to 
design your program to handle UDP's inherently unguaranteed nature. 
Vibe.D doesn't have a gaming-oriented networking system built on top of UDP.

You could also look into ZeroMQ: https://code.dlang.org/packages/zeromq 
I haven't used ZeroMQ myself though, so no promises about how well it 
works, but it may be worth looking into.
Oct 21 2018
parent reply Neia Neutuladh <neia ikeran.org> writes:
On Sun, 21 Oct 2018 23:05:06 -0400, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:

 I'm afraid I'm not familiar with socket.io, and the homepage doesn't
 seem to tell me much (it doesn't even say whether it uses TCP or UDP).
 But that said, in D, the gold-standard for pretty much *anything*
 related to networking and sockets is Vibe.D: http://vibed.org/


socket.io is a mix of XMLHttpRequest, websockets, and maybe long polling, 
based on HTTP of course. It's all Javascript, designed for a browser as a 
client and Node.js as a server.

When socket.io was first created, websockets were *relatively* new, and a 
lot of Windows/IE users were still on IE8/9, so it probably made a fair 
bit of sense to use a tool that could provide okay-ish support for all 
browsers and better support for newer browsers. But there's little reason 
to use it today.

The docs leave much to be desired.


 For a realtime multiplayer games though, that's notoriously a whole
 different can of worms. For that, you definitely do need UDP (which
 again, Vibe.D supports). But, UDP being what it is, you'd still need to
 design your program to handle UDP's inherently unguaranteed nature.
 Vibe.D doesn't have a gaming-oriented networking system built on top of
 UDP.


And since the person's probably communicating between browser clients, 
WebRTC is likely the most practical target there.

https://github.com/koldi/webrtc-dlang
Oct 21 2018
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 10/21/18 11:59 PM, Neia Neutuladh wrote:

 On Sun, 21 Oct 2018 23:05:06 -0400, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:

 I'm afraid I'm not familiar with socket.io, and the homepage doesn't
 seem to tell me much (it doesn't even say whether it uses TCP or UDP).
 But that said, in D, the gold-standard for pretty much *anything*
 related to networking and sockets is Vibe.D: http://vibed.org/


 
 socket.io is a mix of XMLHttpRequest, websockets, and maybe long polling,
 based on HTTP of course. It's all Javascript, designed for a browser as a
 client and Node.js as a server.
 


Ahh, ok, I see. (Can't believe they couldn't have just said so on their 
currently-vapid homepage!) If that's the case, then Vibe.D's existing 
HTTP and TCP support is perfectly sufficient, and will probably also 
result in FAR simpler user code due to the lack of necessity for 
callbacks. At least on the server side, anyway. If the client side is 
inside a web browser, then just like ANY language that isn't JS, you'd 
still have have to (directly or indirectly) deal with the fact that 
JS/Webasm is really the ONLY Turing-complete code naively supported by 
modern browsers.

But, unless I'm being overly pessimistic (entirely possible), that does 
suggest a possible important area of improvement for libs such as Spasm: 
a simple no-brainer, common websockets-based API common to both client 
and vibe.d-based server.
Oct 21 2018
parent reply Fleel <email example.com> writes:
On Monday, 22 October 2018 at 05:36:00 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:

 Vibe.D's existing HTTP and TCP support is perfectly sufficient, 
 and will probably also result in FAR simpler user code due to 
 the lack of necessity for callbacks


How simple is Vibe.D's method of sending messages between client 
and server? In socket.IO all I have to do is (on the sending 
side) socket.emit("testMessage", "Hi"), and on the receiving 
side, socket.on("testMessage", function(contents) 
{console.log(contents)}). Is Vibe.D as simple as this?
Oct 22 2018
parent reply Neia Neutuladh <neia ikeran.org> writes:
On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 20:14:53 +0000, Fleel wrote:


 On Monday, 22 October 2018 at 05:36:00 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)
 wrote:

 Vibe.D's existing HTTP and TCP support is perfectly sufficient,
 and will probably also result in FAR simpler user code due to the lack
 of necessity for callbacks


 
 How simple is Vibe.D's method of sending messages between client and
 server? In socket.IO all I have to do is (on the sending side)
 socket.emit("testMessage", "Hi"), and on the receiving side,
 socket.on("testMessage", function(contents) {console.log(contents)}). Is
 Vibe.D as simple as this?


Not quite as simple; socket.io is a very slightly higher level API.

To replicate the server-side part of that, I'd write something like:

    void delegate(string)[string] handlers;
    router.get("/chatsocket", handleWebSockets((scope WebSocket socket)
    {
        while (true)
        {
            socket.waitForData;
            if (!socket.connected) break;
            string rawData = socket.receiveText;
            auto parts = rawData.splitter("|");
            auto topic = parts.front;
            parts.popFront;
            string payload = parts.empty ? null : parts.front;
            if (auto handler = topic in handlers)
            {
                (*handler)(payload);
            }
        }
    });
    handlers["testMessage"] = (s) => writeln(s);

In other words:

* We have a set of handlers. Each handler applies to a topic (one per 
topic) and accepts a string of data.
* When someone connects to the "/chatsocket" endpoint, set up a websocket.
* Accept text datagrams on the websocket. They have a format of "topic|
payload", or just "topic".
* If there's a handler for that topic, send the payload to that handler.
* If there's no handler, do nothing.

You also have to know that you're not supporting browsers older than five 
years.

Also, that's assuming websockets are appropriate. WebRTC might be 
preferable for your use case (and socket.io might use that? it's difficult 
to tell), and that would require a lot more work.
Oct 22 2018
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 10/22/18 6:08 PM, Neia Neutuladh wrote:

 On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 20:14:53 +0000, Fleel wrote:

 How simple is Vibe.D's method of sending messages between client and
 server? In socket.IO all I have to do is (on the sending side)
 socket.emit("testMessage", "Hi"), and on the receiving side,
 socket.on("testMessage", function(contents) {console.log(contents)}). Is
 Vibe.D as simple as this?


 
 Not quite as simple; socket.io is a very slightly higher level API.
 


Sounds like perhaps a feature request (or PR) for a simple RPC API in 
Vibe.D is in order? Sounds like it wouldn't be too difficult to just get 
it working.

Things in D *CAN* be just as dead-simple as in any other language. 'Tis 
a shameful embarrassment whenever they're not... :(
Oct 24 2018
parent "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 10/24/18 4:00 AM, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:

 On 10/22/18 6:08 PM, Neia Neutuladh wrote:

 On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 20:14:53 +0000, Fleel wrote:

 How simple is Vibe.D's method of sending messages between client and
 server? In socket.IO all I have to do is (on the sending side)
 socket.emit("testMessage", "Hi"), and on the receiving side,
 socket.on("testMessage", function(contents) {console.log(contents)}). Is
 Vibe.D as simple as this?


 Not quite as simple; socket.io is a very slightly higher level API.


 
 Sounds like perhaps a feature request (or PR) for a simple RPC API in 
 Vibe.D is in order? Sounds like it wouldn't be too difficult to just get 
 it working.
 
 Things in D *CAN* be just as dead-simple as in any other language. 'Tis 
 a shameful embarrassment whenever they're not... :(


I'd bet this could even be based on Vibe.D's REST functionality, 
under-the-hood.
Oct 24 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent Martin Tschierschke <mt smartdolphin.de> writes:
On Sunday, 21 October 2018 at 20:14:46 UTC, Fleel wrote:

 Does anyone know of a good D alternative for the socket.IO 
 server (https://socket.io)? I would like to transition my 
 server from node.js to D, but I can't find any D equivalents to 
 socket.IO. (I've seen http://socket.io.dub.pm, but it is dead). 
 Are there any good D libraries that can do the same thing as 
 socket.IO? Thanks!


https://code.dlang.org/packages/hunt-grpc

Might be interesting,too?
Oct 22 2018
prev sibling parent reply bauss <jj_1337 live.dk> writes:
On Sunday, 21 October 2018 at 20:14:46 UTC, Fleel wrote:

 Does anyone know of a good D alternative for the socket.IO 
 server (https://socket.io)? I would like to transition my 
 server from node.js to D, but I can't find any D equivalents to 
 socket.IO. (I've seen http://socket.io.dub.pm, but it is dead). 
 Are there any good D libraries that can do the same thing as 
 socket.IO? Thanks!


https://diamondmvc.org/docs/web-advanced/#websockets
Oct 23 2018
parent bauss <jj_1337 live.dk> writes:
On Tuesday, 23 October 2018 at 11:13:16 UTC, bauss wrote:

 On Sunday, 21 October 2018 at 20:14:46 UTC, Fleel wrote:

 Does anyone know of a good D alternative for the socket.IO 
 server (https://socket.io)? I would like to transition my 
 server from node.js to D, but I can't find any D equivalents 
 to socket.IO. (I've seen http://socket.io.dub.pm, but it is 
 dead). Are there any good D libraries that can do the same 
 thing as socket.IO? Thanks!


 https://diamondmvc.org/docs/web-advanced/#websockets


Ignore this. I just saw a websocket example here and figured that 
was it.

I will add support for socket.io in Diamond within next version 
(3.X.X) but it's not coming for a while.
Oct 23 2018