How to connect two node.js servers with websockets?

Question

Here's my problem:

I have server A, running node.js and using socket.io for communicating with clients (web browsers). This all is running fine and dandy.

However, now that I have server B, which also needs to connect to server A through websockets, I have hit a wall. None of the node.js websocket clients I've found won't work with the socket.io on the server A.

So, this is the case I'm striving for:

.--------.      .----------.      .----------. | CLIENT | <--> | SERVER A | <--> | SERVER B | '--------'      '----------'      '----------' 

Client-server A connection is done through socket.io

Now, Server B (running node.js) should connect to server A via websocket (in order to go through port 80). But...

Even the example code in socket.io-client module doesn't work... :/

// Connect to server var socket = new io.Socket('localhost', {port: 8080}); socket.connect();  // Add a connect listener socket.on('connect', function(socket) {      console.log('Connected.'); }); 

The code just passes without any errors and execution ends after few seconds.

Update: Code samples

Server (which works just fine) looks like this:

// Load requirements var http = require('http'),     io = require('socket.io');  // Create server & socket var server = http.createServer(function(req, res){      // Send HTML headers and message     res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});     res.end('<h1>Aw, snap! 404</h1>'); }); server.listen(8080); io = io.listen(server);  // Add a connect listener io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) {       console.log('Client connected.');      // Disconnect listener     socket.on('disconnect', function() {         console.log('Client disconnected.');     }); }); 

Client looks like this

console.log('1');  // Connect to server var io = require('socket.io-client') var socket = new io.Socket('localhost', {port: 8080}); socket.connect();  console.log('2');  // Add a connect listener socket.on('connect', function(socket) {      console.log('Connected!'); });  console.log('3'); 

1, 2 and 3 prints out just fine, no errors, and few seconds later the process just exits

Also, server A doesn't output anything to the log, even though I have the socket.io logging set on "everything".

Answer 1

Turns out I was using old examples, for some reason, even though I triple checked them. Well, doh.

Also, it turned out that the socket.io-client is broken on latest Node (6.x.x). Managed to find an update from github for it, replaced the files and yay, everything's working!

Edit: Unfortunately I didn't save any links to working examples but after quickly skimming through the code it seems that the only changes were to the client code, which now looks like this:

console.log('1');  // Connect to server var io = require('socket.io-client') var socket = io.connect('localhost:8080', {reconnect: true});  console.log('2');  // Add a connect listener socket.on('connect', function(socket) {      console.log('Connected!'); });  console.log('3'); 

Answer 2

For future people:
Here is 2 very simple Node.js apps that use socket.io to connect, send and receive messages between each other.

Required package is:

npm install socket.io 

---

Node-App-1 server.js:

var io = require('socket.io').listen(3000); io.on('connection', function (socket) {     console.log('connected:', socket.client.id);     socket.on('serverEvent', function (data) {         console.log('new message from client:', data);     });     setInterval(function () {         socket.emit('clientEvent', Math.random());         console.log('message sent to the clients');     }, 3000); }); 

---

Node-App-2 client.js:

var io = require('socket.io-client'); var socket = io.connect("http://localhost:3000/", {     reconnection: true });  socket.on('connect', function () {     console.log('connected to localhost:3000');     socket.on('clientEvent', function (data) {         console.log('message from the server:', data);         socket.emit('serverEvent', "thanks server! for sending '" + data + "'");     }); });