Django channels and socket.io-client

Question

I'm trying to use them for the first time and wonder I'm headed to the right direction.

Here are my understandings,

socket.io is a wrapper around websocket, and falls back to sub-optimal solutions when websocket is not available.

Django channels can talk websocket as well.
(I think it converts django as a message queue like system. although this understanding or misunderstanding should affect this question)

So I'm trying to use Django channels on the server and socket.io-client on the client.

socket.io has api which looks like

socket.on(type, (payload)=> {})

Whereas Django channels has a form of

message.reply_channel.send({ "text": json })

is the "text" type of socket.on(type)?

Can Django channels and socket.io-client talk to each other?

Answer 1

From the Socket.IO README:

Note: Socket.IO is not a WebSocket implementation. Although Socket.IO indeed uses WebSocket as a transport when possible, it adds some metadata to each packet: the packet type, the namespace and the ack id when a message acknowledgement is needed. That is why a WebSocket client will not be able to successfully connect to a Socket.IO server, and a Socket.IO client will not be able to connect to a WebSocket server (like ws://echo.websocket.org) either. Please see the protocol specification here.

So, you shouldn't expect Channels to work directly with Socket.IO. Global browser support for websockets is at 93%, which is probably high enough to just use the websocket API directly.

Answer 2

To quote the creator of django channels: https://github.com/django/channels/issues/1038

Channels doesn't support socket.io - it's a different protocol that isn't websockets or HTTP but layers on top of them. You'll have to use a socket.io server if you want to use it.