Web Socket

WebSocket is a computer communications protocol, providing full-duplex communication channels over a single TCP connection.

Drawbacks of XHR

• Header needs to be sent on each communication via HTTP
• Slow and polling might be required

Web Sockets flow

• Web browser can initiate a persistent connection
• Web browser can engage in bidirectional conversations between web browsers and servers
• Web browser can send message to web server
• Web server can also initiate a conversation and send messages to the web browser
• No headers needed hence reduced message overhead: This is because of frame based data exchange approach
• Using web sockets message order is not guaranteed

STOMP

• Simple Text Oriented Messaging protocol
• Application level subprotocol compared to Web Sockets which is low level protocol
• Some methods include:
  • connect()
  • subscribe()
  • send()
  • onmessage()

SockJS

• SockJS is a cross-browser JavaScript library that provides a WebSocket-like object

Client Side Sockets

Some popular libraries are:

• SockJS (Application level)
• Socket.io (Application level)
• Engine.io (Low level)

Testing Sockets

Client side testing libraries:

• Artillery

Server side testing libraries:

• Junit

Full Load Performance Testing:

• Apache Jmeter