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Browserver: a node.js HTTP server, in your browser
- mislav 14y agoMind-bending.
- quarterto 14y agoIt's not just you! http://browserver.org http://browserver.org looks down from here.
- debacle 14y agoAnd they're down. It was a good 15 minutes, though.
- tinco 14y agoI bet they closed their window >_>
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mekwall 14y agoHacker News killed it with fire!
- thefox 14y agoYes, still down.
- sehrope 14y agoAnyone know if browserver.org is self hosting (i.e. running on some guys desktop/laptop in a browser window)? Site is down at the moment and I'm wondering if this is why.
- jedschmidt 14y agoHa, tinco beat you to that joke. The server is the smallest instance that Joyent offers right now... hopefully it'll hang in there during the HN rush.
- withjive 14y agoWould that happen to be one of the free http://no.de http://no.de instances? Which if I recall correctly come with 128mb ram on their custom solaris servers... I always wondered what kind of load those small configurations using NodeJS while handling something non-trivial could do. Could you share some traffic/load numbers from getting HN'ed?
- jedschmidt 14y agoHard to tell right now... I started at Joyent's smallest node.js offering (1GB) and then ramped it up to 8GB when the load hit. The server is crashing a lot, but it's not very easy for me to debug right now. Let me get back to you once the dust settles, deal?
- withjive 14y agoWow must of took a real hammering from being on the number spot. Goodluck!
- jedschmidt 14y agoHey all, I put browserver together in my free time over the last week. It's still a bit of a toy, but I think it's useful to explore ideas around extending webhooks all the way to the browser, to simplify our increasingly complicated web architectures. It's already late here in Tokyo, but I'll be up for a bit if anyone wants to chat/brainstorm about approaches like this (and also to make sure the server stays up).
- quarterto 14y agoSimple question: how the fuck?
- mcantelon 14y agoBasically a web browser reaches the Node HTTP server and gets assigned a throwaway hostname on the Node server. The browser and the server have a bidirectional connection (probably WebSocket via Socket.io or something). The throwaway hostname can be queried, via an HTTP API, and will, upon request, query the web browser through the bidirectional connection then will relay the results back.
- ivix 14y agoYeah, it's not quite a HTTP server, more of an API-driven backend to a HTTP server. Still neat.
- shurane 14y agoSimple statement: stop being so cool. On a related note, keep at it. I hope you go places. And where/how did you get the idea? Things like this make me wonder why I'm not having fun creating neat (and useful!) things.
- madrobby 14y agoI'm slightly disappointed that it's implemented in more than 140 bytes. Keep on being awesome. :)
- brettbergeron 14y ago
- mgurlitz 14y agoGithub has a good readme if this site doesn't stay up: https://github.com/jed/browserver-node https://github.com/jed/browserver-node
- jedschmidt 14y agoGood point. I'll get to githubbing the browserver.org site itself now.
- jedschmidt 14y agoOkay, it's here: https://github.com/jed/browserver.org https://github.com/jed/browserver.org
- arunoda 14y agoNice attempt. But your title is misleading. You just listen for a URL and forward it to the browser with socket.io (Pusher, Pubnub are some commercial services for this) If I can change some content in your webpage by just curling localhost, I can judge the title you put :)
- shurane 14y agoSo he still needs to host something that forwards information to the browser? Shucks.
- poundy 14y agoYes, he needs to have a Node/Socket.io server somewhere.
- jedschmidt 14y agoIndeed, this isn't entirely original, and I know services like this exist. To me, this is what PUSHER's API _should_ have been.
- e12e 14y agoSo, it's not a new take on POW (plain old webserver): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/pow-plain-old-webserver/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/pow-plain-old... which apparently have been abandoned, and could use a fork (source at: http://davidkellogg.com/pow/ http://davidkellogg.com/pow/ )? Apparently there's a newer variation at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/browser-server/ and of course there's Opera's Unity. I do get that the idea is that it "just" uses javascript (the server appears to be down, so I'm actually guessing) -- but when such projects already exist, I kind of expected more...
- arunoda 14y agoI thing they use some kind of native addon (I don't know how FF addon works) to do this. Unfortunately Chrome's native client(NaCl) does not support TCP yet! So I think something like this impossible in chrome? Any ideas?
- state 14y agoI think there's a ton of unrealized potential in this kind of thinking. Although people will say 'But that was done by X a year ago!' I see that as evidence that this is gaining momentum. Now, what's the project that will fully take advantage of this kind of thing?
- shaunxcode 14y agoA lot of times it is about coming up with the right terminology and positioning of an idea for it to "take off". This is a really nice approach in that it utilizes concepts/a paradigm we are already comfortable with.
- state 14y agoYeah, agreed. Seems like one of the best things about this is that it positions a (potentially) big idea in a way which makes it easily understandable and fairly everyday.
- tom_m 14y agoI mean yes, you never know what it will be used for. It may not be anything by itself, but combined with a dozen other things it may be critical for something clever. That's what I love about the internet - it's a massive jigsaw puzzle.
- Xurinos 14y agoMy hope is an answer to this problem that is so easy that my computer-phobic grandmother can do it: https://xkcd.com/949/ https://xkcd.com/949/
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoI think the Opera Unity approach is probably the best for this; perhaps such peernets will have their day. I see the Unity approach being popularise via social networking (https://alicious.com/opera-about-to-change-the-world/ https://alicious.com/opera-about-to-change-the-world/) enabling users to retain control over their data and shop for suppliers to present a front-end to unify the data-streams of their associates.
- arturadib 14y agoTL;DR: This is a proxy server that routes HTTP requests from a unique subdomain (e.g. http://m7rp3u2ntr9t3xr.browserver.org http://m7rp3u2ntr9t3xr.browserver.org) to a browser that's visiting browserver.org. The JavaScript in the browser then handles the HTTP response. This is possible thanks to a persistent connection between the browser and browserver.org, via some "websocket-like" protocol. The title "node.js HTTP server, in your browser" is because the HTTP handler in the client (browser) has a Node-like API, see: https://github.com/jed/browserver-client#example https://github.com/jed/browserver-client#example
- jedschmidt 14y agoThank you for explaining this much better than I did!
- fichtl80 14y agoi get a gateway error
- bilalhusain 14y agohttp://www.realtime.co/ http://www.realtime.co/
- ericz 14y agoI find this title rather misleading. There is no node.js HTTP server in your browser. Meaning, you cannot do anything that is part of Node.js in the browser "server" The browser is still running its original js engine with none of the Node goodies. It merely receives proxied requests, does some stuff to it, then sends it back to the proxy, which returns it to the client.
- arturadib 14y agoThe title might be a little too ambitious, but it is partially justified as the HTTP handler in the client (browser) has a Node-like API, see: https://github.com/jed/browserver-client#example https://github.com/jed/browserver-client#example
- jedschmidt 14y agoIt merely receives proxied requests, does some stuff to it, then sends it back to the proxy, which returns it to the client. You just described the majority of the web servers that we web developers deal with. Sure, it's a proxy, but the fact that the machine responding is connected via WebSocket and not a local network doesn't make it any less of a server, in my opinion.
- aba_sababa 14y agoI don't really see why this is special. It's just a websocket connection that happens to show every request made to the server. Your browser is not a server, no matter which way you cut it.
- andrewmunsell 14y agoSure it is. Yes, the web socket connection is passing through requests to the browser-server, but that browser-server is the one responding.
- VikingCoder 14y ago...I'm looking forward to WebRTC, which should make this obsolete, right? http://www.webrtc.org/ http://www.webrtc.org/ That said, this is cool!
- jmspring 14y agoWebrtc is about realtime communications. This is about exposing webhooks clientside.
- VikingCoder 14y agoIt also allows direct client-to-client communications.
- vitno 14y agonot yet arbitrary data. The protocol is also really hairy, I recommend using https://github.com/webRTC/webRTC.io https://github.com/webRTC/webRTC.io
- alan_cx 14y agoOk so I can access it either, but: Loading the app... If this message doesn't go away within 10 seconds, it means that the server crashed under heavy load. Please refresh mercilessly. :)
- mcantelon 14y agoWeinre is a project that, if my understanding of it is correct, leverages the same basic idea. It's used to remotely debug mobile browser issues and also uses Node. https://github.com/apache/incubator-cordova-weinre https://github.com/apache/incubator-cordova-weinre http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nL6xey13fE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nL6xey13fE
- sharps_xp 14y agoI do not understand what is going on.
- napolux 14y agoWe put a server in your browser. #inception
- bestest 14y agoWhat sorcery is this!
- Kilimanjaro 14y agoJust add a text area and let people share some html. Now that would be cool! Change some HTML in that text area and refresh automatically in all listeners. That would be an interesting toy to play for a while.
- rip_kirby 14y agoIf you look at the favicon, there's two of them faviconception
- shawndumas 14y ago෴
- thedeuce 14y agohow useless