WebSocket connection on wss failed

Question

I have purchased a certificate and installed in my node.js website.But the https at the browser shows green and is OK.Now, I am trying to establish a socket connection using wss, but it failed. The error at the Javascript client side is like this.

   WebSocket connection to 'wss://securedsitedotcom:3003/call' failed:        
   WebSocket opening handshake was canceled

Please help!

Code at client side (Javascript)

var ws = new WebSocket('wss://securedsitedotcom:3003/call');

Code at server side (node.js)

 https = require('https');
 var server = https.createServer({
    key: fs.readFileSync(config.certKeyPath),
    cert: fs.readFileSync(config.certCrt),
    requestCert: true,
    rejectUnauthorized: false
 },app);
 server.listen(port);
 var wss = new ws.Server({
   server: server,
   path: '/call'
 });

Error at the browser console :

WebSocket connection to 'wss://securedsitedotcom:3003/call' failed:          

WebSocket opening handshake was canceled

Answer 1

I ran into a similar issue, but I was using a Self Signed Certificate. You mentioned that you bought a Certificate. I guest it is signed by the certificate authority.

Otherwise, like in my case, non-validated certificate can cause an "opening handshake was cancelled" error. A validated certificate is either validated by a third party (Certificate Authority, ie VeriSign) or explicitly authorized by the client.

In my case, VeriSign didn't sign my certificate (self signed), so I had to explicitly authorized it. To do so, I simply need to visit the https URL with the browser (in your case "https://securedsitedotcom:3003/call"). Then a "warning unauthorized host" appear. You need to authorize the exception and than you can make your WSS connection.

Your server can use any port, it is not bound to 443. 443 is the default port for https but any port can be explicitly specified like you've done.

I hope it helps someone.

Answer 2

Recent work with Chrome has revealed that if a page is served as https on Chrome, websockets must use wss. And if wss must be used, port 443 must be used (and to boot not any other secure port and so far I have not seen any way to change the port), which may be your problem since your port looks like 3003 above.

Right now I am trying to get my IT group to patch/upgrade Apache on that server so mod_proxy_wstunnel can be used to make Apache listening on 443 a reverse proxy and pass all wss traffic through to my websocket server.

Hope this helps.