Sending message to client with Web Sockets

Question

I'm using https://github.com/orchidsoftware/web-socket in my laravel project and I want to send messages to clients connected.

So far I've followed the README and got the server up and running - I get the alert "The connection is established.".

But when I try to send a message to the client, nothing happens. I've created a sendMessageToAll function and tried to call it both from onOpen and from another controller:

public function onOpen(ConnectionInterface $conn)
{
    $this->clients->attach($conn);
    $this->sendMessageToAll("message");
}

public function sendMessageToAll($msg){
    foreach ($this->clients as $client) {
        $client->send($msg);
    }
}

And from another controller:

public function test() {
    $ws = new WebSocketClass();
    $ws->sendMessageToAll("testing");
}

Is there something I'm missing in order to get it up and running?

Answer 1

From another controller? You cannot access process (php script) running in another thread (that's you server). Socket server is a hub between connected clients, waits for a message and if receives one, sends it out again (if told to do so). In other words - if you want to send message to all connected clients you'll have to be one of them.

---

Your initial code looks ok, server should be up and running. So, test it.

Easiest way is to open some telnet connections to your socketserver and start messaging.

public function onOpen(ConnectionInterface $conn)
{
    $this->clients->attach($conn);
    $msg = "Connection established!\n"
    echo $msg;                        // send server log to shell
    sendMessageToAll($msg);           // your initial function should be working
}

public function onMessage(ConnectionInterface $from, $msg) {
    echo "Message from: {$conn->resourceId} received!\n";  //log again
    sendMessageToAll($msg);
}

public function onError(ConnectionInterface $conn, \Exception $e) {
    echo "Error: {$e->getMessage()}\n";
    $conn->close();
}

Also, debug your sending function:

public function sendMessageToAll($msg){
    foreach ($this->clients as $client) {
        echo "Sending message to {$client->resourceId} \n";
        $client->send($msg);
    }
}

Now, open some telnet connections to your socketserver port (getting noticed in server console):

telnet 127.0.0.1 8080

and send message from one of them. Again, you should get notice from server and receive the message by each telnet client.