Note: Our friends at The Hybrid Group wrote this great post on how to use WebSockets for us. Thanks guys!

In this post, we’ll be covering an introduction to WebSockets, and implementing a basic WebSockets chat app using EM-WebSocket.

WebSockets is one of the cooler new features in the HTML5 spec, and allows clients and servers to communicate without using AJAX requests, or HTTP long-polling(Comet).

###What are WebSockets?

WebSockets are, according to the specification:

an API that enables Web pages to use the WebSocket protocol (defined by the IETF) for two-way communication with a remote host.

Essentially, WebSockets can replace existing HTTP long-polling solutions. WebSockets allow for a single, long-held TCP connection to be established between the client and server. This allows for full-duplex, bi-directional messaging between both sides with very little overhead (and, as a result, very little latency).

The WebSocket specification defines two new URI scemes,ws:__and__wss:, for unencrypted and encrypted WebSocket connections respectively.

###Browser Support

The current WebSockets spec is supported by the following browsers:

Chrome 16

Internet Explorer 10

Opera 12

Safari 6

###Getting Started

To get started on building our Em-WebSocket chat app, let’s build a very basic Sinatra app running within EventMachine. We’re going to need to use thin, since it supports EventMachine:

# Gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org'



gem 'thin'

gem 'sinatra'

gem 'em-websocket'







# app.rb

require 'thin'

require 'sinatra/base'

require 'em-websocket'



EventMachine.run do

class App < Sinatra::Base

get '/' do

erb :index

end

end



# our WebSockets server logic will go here



App . run ! :port = > 3000

end





# views / index . erb

<! doctype html >

<html>

<head>

</head>

<body>



# WebSockets Chat App

<div id= "chat-log" >



<input type= "text" id= "message" >

<button id= "disconnect" > Disconnect </button>







<script src= "//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js" ></script>

<script>

// where our WebSockets logic will go later

</script>

</body>

</html>



Run it with:

bundle exec ruby app.rb



And now we have a good start for our chat application. Next, we’ll get the server side of things set up.

###WebSockets Server

First, let’s get the server set up to run within EventMachine, and handle a WebSocket connection. This is made really simple by em-websocket , and we don’t even need to handle the headers for the WebSocket handshake:

EventMachine.run do

# ... [previous Sinatra stuff]



@clients = []



EM::WebSocket.start(:host => '0.0.0.0', :port => '3001') do |ws|

ws.onopen do |handshake|

@clients << ws

ws.send "Connected to #{handshake.path}."

end



ws.onclose do

ws.send "Closed."

@clients.delete ws

end



ws.onmessage do |msg|

puts "Received Message: #{msg}"

@clients.each do |socket|

socket.send msg

end

end

end



# ... [run Sinatra server]

end



This will take care of the WebSocket handshake with clients, and take care of the chat backend. Now, let’s set up the client!

###WebSockets Client

This will set up our clients to be able to interact with the WebSocket server we just set up. The server will take any messages the client sends, and re-broadcast it to all clients.

First, let’s write basic functions to display messages on the page:

function addMessage(msg) {

$("#chat-log").append("" + msg + "");

}



Now, let’s set up a connection with our WebSocket server, and set it up to connect as soon as the browser’s ready:

var socket, host;

host = "ws://localhost:3001";



function connect() {

try {

socket = new WebSocket(host);



addMessage("Socket State: " + socket.readyState);



socket.onopen = function() {

addMessage("Socket Status: " + socket.readyState + " (open)");

}



socket.onclose = function() {

addMessage("Socket Status: " + socket.readyState + " (closed)");

}



socket.onmessage = function(msg) {

addMessage("Received: " + msg.data);

}

} catch(exception) {

addMessage("Error: " + exception);

}

}



$(function() {

connect();

});



Now we can set up the logic to send messages to the server whenever the user presses the return key (keycode 13). This will send the message to the server, and let the user know that the message has been sent:

function send() {

var text = $("#message").val();

if (text == '') {

addMessage("Please Enter a Message");

return;

}



try {

socket.send(text);

addMessage("Sent: " + text)

} catch(exception) {

addMessage("Failed To Send")

}



$("#message").val('');

}



$('#message').keypress(function(event) {

if (event.keyCode == '13') { send(); }

});



And, last but not least, let’s let our users disconnect from the server if they want to:

$("#disconnect").click(function() {

socket.close()

});



And this wraps up our client side. It will now open a WebSocket connection to our server, send/receive messages, and disconnect if the user wants to.

###Conclusion

Now we have a working chat service. To start it, we run the same command as before:

bundle exec ruby app.rb



Now you can browse to http://localhost:3000/ , and see the chat system in action. Try opening it in multiple browsers to test it out! If you’d like to check out the full source code, you can find it on GitHub.

For some further reading on WebSockets, you may wish to consult the spec. Additionally, there’s some good info on the MDN, but that site isn’t 100% complete yet.