Socket.io and modern browsers aren't working

Question

I'm having some weird issues with socket.io and modern browsers. Surprisingly, with IE9 works fine because fallbacks to flashsocket which appears to work better.

In my server (with express)

var io = socketio.listen(server.listen(8080));
io.configure('production', function(){
    console.log("Server in production mode");
    io.enable('browser client minification');  // send minified client
    io.enable('browser client etag');          // apply etag caching logic based on version number
    io.enable('browser client gzip');          // gzip the file
    io.set('log level', 1);                    // reduce logging
    io.set('transports', [                     // enable all transports (optional if you want flashsocket)
        'websocket'
        , 'flashsocket'
        , 'htmlfile'
        , 'xhr-polling'
        , 'jsonp-polling'
    ]);
});

On the browser I can see in the Network tab (on Chrome) that a websocket is stablished and get in 101 Switching Protocols in Pending mode. After that, appears xhr-polling and jsonp-polling (what happend to flashsocket ? )

The worst part is that info don't go back and forth. I have this on connection:

io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
    // If someone new comes, it will notified of the current status of the application
    console.log('Someone connected');
    app.sendCurrentStatus(socket.id);
    io.sockets.emit('currentStatus', {'connected': true);
});

And on client:

socket.on('currentStatus', function (data){ console.log(data) });

However I only be able to see that log when I turn off the server which is launched with:

NODE_ENV=production node server.js

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Finally, after really banging my head against a wall, I decided to test in several environments to see if it was a Firewall issue since the machine is behind several ones.

It turned out that no one but me had the problem so I checked the Antivirus (Trend Micro) and after disabling, Chrome/Firefox were able to make their magic.

Moral of the story

Besides what it says here - Socket.IO and firewall software - whenever you face an issue that nobody in the internet seems to have (ie, not logged on github nor the socket.io group) it's probably caused by your Antivirus. They are evil. Sometimes.

Answer 2

You should just be having the socketio listen on the app itself.
Also, I have never need to do all of the server side configuration with the socket that you are doing - socket.io should work out of the box on most browsers without doing that. I would try first without configuring. Also, on the server, you should emit from the socket that is passed to the callback function rather than doing io.sockets.on.

var io = socketio.listen(app);

io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
  // If someone new comes, it will notified of the current status of the application
  console.log('Someone connected');
  app.sendCurrentStatus(socket.id);
  socket.emit('currentStatus', {'connected': true);
});

on the client, you need to connect first:

var socket = io.connect();
socket.on('currentStatus', function (data){ console.log(data) });

If you want to see an example of two way communication using socket.io, check out my Nodio application.

The server side: https://github.com/oveddan/Nodio/blob/master/lib/Utils.js

And the client side: https://github.com/oveddan/Nodio/blob/master/public/javascripts/Instruments.js