Socket.IO

Socket.IO is an event-driven library for real-time web applications. It enables real-time, bi-directional communication between web clients and servers. It consists of two components: a client, and a server. Both components have a nearly identical API.

Socket.IO is also a protocol, where different complying implementations of the protocol can communicate with each other. The main implementation consists of two parts: a client that runs in the browser and a server for Node.js. Apart from the main implementation, there are multiple implementations, for example, the official Deno (JavaScript), C++, Java, Python, and Swift servers.

Socket.IO primarily uses the WebSocket protocol with polling as a fallback option, while providing the same interface. Although it can be used simply as a wrapper for WebSockets, it provides many additional features such as heartbeats and timeouts.

It can be installed with the npm (Node Package Manager).

See also

References


Uses material from the Wikipedia article Socket.IO, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.