Open a Websocket connection from Meteor.js

Question

How can we open a Websockets connection from Meteor?

Can we do something like:

ws = new WebSocket('ws://localhost/path');
ws.on('open', function() {
    ws.send('something');
});
ws.on('message', function(message) {
    console.log('received: %s', message);
});

Error: ReferenceError: WebSocket is not defined

---

Using socket.io npm package

var io = Meteor.require('socket.io')
var socket = io.connect('http://localhost');

Error: TypeError: Object # has no method 'connect'

---

Using ws npm package

var WebSocket = Meteor.require('ws');
var ws = new WebSocket('ws://localhost');

Error: Error: Cannot find module '../build/default/bufferutil'

Answer 1

I created a new Meteor package joncursi:socket-io-client to solve this problem. Please see https://atmospherejs.com/joncursi/socket-io-client for more detail and example usage. Since I've bundled the NPM binaries into a package for you, you don't have to worry about installing NPM packages, declaring NPM.require() dependencies, etc. And best of all, you can deploy to .meteor.com without a hitch.