Send message to specific client with socket.io and node.js

Question

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

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

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.

Well you have to grab the client for that (surprise), you can either go the simple way:

var io = io.listen(server);
io.clients[sessionID].send()

Which may break, I doubt it, but it's always a possibility that io.clients might get changed, so use the above with caution

Or you keep track of the clients yourself, therefore you add them to your own clients object in the connection listener and remove them in the disconnect listener.

I would use the latter one, since depending on your application you might want to have more state on the clients anyway, so something like clients[id] = {conn: clientConnect, data: {...}} might do the job.

In 1.0 you should use:

io.sockets.connected[socketid].emit();

You can use

//send message only to sender-client

socket.emit('message', 'check this');

//or you can send to all listeners including the sender

io.emit('message', 'check this');

//send to all listeners except the sender

socket.broadcast.emit('message', 'this is a message');

//or you can send it to a room

socket.broadcast.to('chatroom').emit('message', 'this is the message to all');