Which websocket library to use with Node.js?

node.js websocket socket.io sockjs engine.io
balupton picture balupton · May 6, 2013 · Viewed 232.5k times · Source

Currently there is a plethora of websocket libraries for node.js, the most popular seem to be:

However I can't find any solid concrete comparisons between any of them... Apparently Socket.io was awesome, but has become quite dated and has failing builds. Both ws and websocket-node claim they are the fastest. And engine.io seems new, but a lot heavier than the lighter aletarntives.

It would be amazing if we or someone could put together an answer that serves as a guide on which socket library to use and when, as well as a comparison between them.

Answer

balupton picture balupton · May 6, 2013

Getting the ball rolling with this community wiki answer. Feel free to edit me with your improvements.

  • ws WebSocket server and client for node.js. One of the fastest libraries if not the fastest one.

  • websocket-node WebSocket server and client for node.js

  • websocket-driver-node WebSocket server and client protocol parser node.js - used in faye-websocket-node

  • faye-websocket-node WebSocket server and client for node.js - used in faye and sockjs

  • socket.io WebSocket server and client for node.js + client for browsers + (v0 has newest to oldest fallbacks, v1 of Socket.io uses engine.io) + channels - used in stack.io. Client library tries to reconnect upon disconnection.

  • sockjs WebSocket server and client for node.js and others + client for browsers + newest to oldest fallbacks

  • faye WebSocket server and client for node.js and others + client for browsers + fallbacks + support for other server-side languages

  • deepstream.io clusterable realtime server that handles WebSockets & TCP connections and provides data-sync, pub/sub and request/response

  • socketcluster WebSocket server cluster which makes use of all CPU cores on your machine. For example, if you were to use an xlarge Amazon EC2 instance with 32 cores, you would be able to handle almost 32 times the traffic on a single instance.

  • primus Provides a common API for most of the libraries above for easy switching + stability improvements for all of them.

When to use:

  • use the basic WebSocket servers when you want to use the native WebSocket implementations on the clientside, beware of the browser incompatabilities

  • use the fallback libraries when you care about browser fallbacks

  • use the full featured libraries when you care about channels

  • use primus when you have no idea about what to use, are not in the mood for rewriting your application when you need to switch frameworks because of changing project requirements or need additional connection stability.

Where to test:

Firecamp is a GUI testing environment for SocketIO, WS and all major real-time technology. Debug the real-time events while you're developing it.

Related questions

Send message to specific client with socket.io and node.js

I'm working with socket.io and node.js and until now it seems pretty good, but I don't know how to send a message from the server to an specific client, something like this: client.send(message, receiverSessionId) But neither …

Read More
Differences between socket.io and websockets

What are the differences between socket.io and websockets in node.js? Are they both server push technologies? The only differences I felt was, socket.io allowed me to send/emit messages by specifying an event name. In the case …

Read More
node.js, socket.io with SSL

I'm trying to get socket.io running with my SSL certificate however, it will not connect. I based my code off the chat example: var https = require('https'); var fs = require('fs'); /** * Bootstrap app. */ var sys = require('sys') require.paths.…

Read More