websocket-ts

A client-websocket written in TypeScript meant to be used from within browsers with focus on simplicity, reliability and extensibility. It provides convenient features to automatically reconnect and buffer pending messages.

Features

• Dependency-free and small in size
• Uses the browser-native WebSocket-functionality
  • Copies the event-based WebSocket-API
  • Provides access to the underlying WebSocket
• When the connection is lost, it can optionally be configured to
  • Automatically try to reconnect in a smart way
  • Buffer messages that are sent when the connection is re-established
• Builder-class for easy initialization and configuration
• High test-coverage and in-code documentation
  • Enables you to easily modify and extend the code

Installation

In your project-root:

$ npm install websocket-ts 

In your project-code:

import {WebsocketBuilder} from 'websocket-ts';

Usage

Initialization

New instances are most easily created with the provided WebsocketBuilder:

const ws = new WebsocketBuilder('ws://localhost:42421').build();

Events & Callbacks

There are five events which can be subscribed to through callbacks:

export enum WebsocketEvents {
    open = 'open',          // Connection is opened or re-opened
    close = 'close',        // Connection is closed
    error = 'error',        // An error occurred
    message = 'message',    // A message was received
    retry = 'retry'         // A try to re-connect is made
}

The callbacks are called with the issuing websocket-instance and the causing event as arguments:

const ws = new WebsocketBuilder('ws://localhost:42421')
    .onOpen((i, ev) => { console.log("opened") })
    .onClose((i, ev) => { console.log("closed") })
    .onError((i, ev) => { console.log("error") })
    .onMessage((i, ev) => { console.log("message") })
    .onRetry((i, ev) => { console.log("retry") })
    .build();

You can register multiple callbacks for the same event. They will be called in stack-order:

const ws = new WebsocketBuilder('ws://localhost:42421')
    .onMessage((i, e) => { console.log("echo sent") })
    .onMessage((i, e) => { i.send(e.data) })
    .onMessage((i, e) => { console.log("message received") })
    .build();

Send & buffer messages

To send messages, use the websockets send()-method:

let ws: Websocket;
/* ... */
ws.send("Hello World!");

If you want to buffer to-be-send messages while the websocket is disconnected, you can provide it with a Buffer. The websocket will then use the buffer to temporarily keep your messages and send them in correct order once the connection is re-established. There are currently two Buffer-implementations. You can also implement your own by inheriting from the Buffer-interface.

LRUBuffer

The LRUBuffer keeps the last n messages. When the buffer is full, the oldest message in the buffer will be replaced. It uses an array as a circular-buffer for linear space- and time-requirements. To use the LRUBuffer with a capacity of 1000:

const ws = new WebsocketBuilder('ws://localhost:42421')
    .withBuffer(new LRUBuffer(1000))
    .build();

TimeBuffer

The TimeBuffer will keep all messages that were written within the last n milliseconds. It will drop messages that are older than the specified amount. To use the TimeBuffer that keeps messages from the last 5 minutes:

const ws = new WebsocketBuilder('ws://localhost:42421')
    .withBuffer(new TimeBuffer(5 * 60 * 1000))
    .build();

Reconnect & Backoff

If you want the websocket to automatically try to re-connect when the connection is lost, you can provide it with a Backoff. The websocket will use the Backoff to determine how long it should wait between re-tries. There are currently three Backoff-implementations. You can also implement your own by inheriting from the Backoff-interface.

ConstantBackoff

The ConstantBackoff will make the websocket wait a constant time between each connection retry. To use the ConstantBackoff with a wait-time of 1 second:

const ws  = new WebsocketBuilder('ws://localhost:42421')
    .withBackoff(new ConstantBackoff(500))
    .build();

LinearBackoff

The LinearBackoff linearly increases the wait-time between connection-retries until an optional maximum is reached. To use the LinearBackoff to initially wait 0 seconds and increase the wait-time by 1 second with every retry until a maximum of 8 seconds is reached:

const ws  = new WebsocketBuilder('ws://localhost:42421')
    .withBackoff(new LinearBackoff(0, 1000, 8000))
    .build();

ExponentialBackoff

The ExponentialBackoff doubles the backoff with every retry until a maximum is reached. This is modelled after the binary exponential-backoff algorithm used in computer-networking. To use the ExponentialBackoff that will produce the series [100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400]:

const ws  = new WebsocketBuilder('ws://localhost:42421')
    .withBackoff(new ExponentialBackoff(100, 7))
    .build();

Build & Tests

To build the project run yarn build. All provided components are covered with unit-tests. To run the tests run yarn test.