Socket.io alternative [closed]

Question

I apologise in advance that this might get flagged and closed for being an opinion-based thread but this is purely a fact-finding mission. I'm very new to the world of web sockets and the only reputable library I'm aware of is socket.io and the site is currently down so I'm taking the opportunity to discover another library. I'm building a MEAN app and I'd like the ability to have communication between clients and a central server, all in real-time which is where socket.io would come into play but are there any other alternatives I should know about?

(My server is written with Express 4)

Answer 1

A few days ago Socket.io 1.0 was released (previous version was 0.9). The official website http://socket.io seems to being updated too (as well as Socket.io's Github wiki page). I visited a new version of the website just yesterday and it was 200 OK.

As for your question - well, this is really opinion-based, and in my opinion Socket.io provides all you need to build cross-browser real-time applications, so I would recommend using it. Socket.io is good because:

• It has a variety of transports between client and server: WebSockets, XHR long polling, JSONP, Flashsockets, etc. (Important note: since version 1.0 Socket.io is able to change transport on a fly without messages loss)
• It has rooms support
• It has auto-reconnect support
• It has simple and convenient API
• It has simple integration with Express and Koa
• It has large community
• It is fully cross-browser

Though if you want to know more about alternatives, take a look at SockJS. This is a framework similar to Socket.io. But since I have never used it I can't tell how good it is.

Good luck and sorry for my English :)