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 the .send() nor the .broadcast() methods seem to supply my need.

What I have found as a possible solution, is that the .broadcast() method accepts as a second parameter an array of SessionIds to which not send the message, so I could pass an array with all the SessionIds connected at that moment to the server, except the one I wish send the message, but I feel there must be a better solution.

Any ideas?

Solution 1:

Ivo Wetzel's answer doesn't seem to be valid in Socket.io 0.9 anymore.

In short you must now save the socket.id and use io.sockets.socket(savedSocketId).emit(...) to send messages to it.

This is how I got this working in clustered Node.js server:

First you need to set Redis store as the store so that messages can go cross processes:

var express = require("express");
var redis = require("redis");
var sio = require("socket.io");

var client = redis.createClient()
var app = express.createServer();
var io = sio.listen(app);

io.set("store", new sio.RedisStore);


// In this example we have one master client socket 
// that receives messages from others.

io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) {

  // Promote this socket as master
  socket.on("I'm the master", function() {

    // Save the socket id to Redis so that all processes can access it.
    client.set("mastersocket", socket.id, function(err) {
      if (err) throw err;
      console.log("Master socket is now" + socket.id);
    });
  });

  socket.on("message to master", function(msg) {

    // Fetch the socket id from Redis
    client.get("mastersocket", function(err, socketId) {
      if (err) throw err;
      io.sockets.socket(socketId).emit(msg);
    });
  });

});

I omitted the clustering code here, because it makes this more cluttered, but it's trivial to add. Just add everything to the worker code. More docs here http://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html

Solution 2:

each socket joins a room with a socket id for a name, so you can just

io.to('socket#id').emit('hey')

docs: http://socket.io/docs/rooms-and-namespaces/#default-room

Cheers

Solution 3:

The simplest, most elegant way

verified working with socket.io v3.1.1

It's as easy as:

client.emit("your message");

And that's it. Ok, but how does it work?

Minimal working example

Here's an example of a simple client-server interaction where each client regularly receives a message containing a sequence number. There is a unique sequence for each client and that's where the "I need to send a message to a particular client" comes into play.

Server

server.js

const
    {Server} = require("socket.io"),
    server = new Server(8000);

let
    sequenceNumberByClient = new Map();

// event fired every time a new client connects:
server.on("connection", (socket) => {
    console.info(`Client connected [id=${socket.id}]`);
    // initialize this client's sequence number
    sequenceNumberByClient.set(socket, 1);

    // when socket disconnects, remove it from the list:
    socket.on("disconnect", () => {
        sequenceNumberByClient.delete(socket);
        console.info(`Client gone [id=${socket.id}]`);
    });
});

// sends each client its current sequence number
setInterval(() => {
    for (const [client, sequenceNumber] of sequenceNumberByClient.entries()) {
        client.emit("seq-num", sequenceNumber);
        sequenceNumberByClient.set(client, sequenceNumber + 1);
    }
}, 1000);

The server starts listening on port 8000 for incoming connections. As soon as a new connection is established, that client is added to a map that keeps track of its sequence number. The server also listens for the disconnect event to remove the client from the map when it leaves.

Each and every second, a timer is fired. When it does, the server walks through the map and sends a message to every client with their current sequence number, incrementing it right after. That's all that is to it. Easy peasy.

Client

The client part is even simpler. It just connects to the server and listens for the seq-num message, printing it to the console every time it arrives.

client.js

const
    io = require("socket.io-client"),
    ioClient = io.connect("http://localhost:8000");

ioClient.on("seq-num", (msg) => console.info(msg));

Running the example

Install the required libraries:

npm install [email protected] [email protected]

Run the server:

node server

Open other terminal windows and spawn as many clients as you want by running:

node client

I have also prepared a gist with the full code here.