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I like the separation of the transports into engine.io, however it would be even better if it exposed a standard Node.js Stream interface so that it played nice

I like the separation of the transports into engine.io, however it would be even better if it exposed a standard Node.js Stream interface so that it played nicely with the growing ecosystem of Stream-related modules. Dominic Tarr, substack, and others have been advocating this idea for awhile: https://github.com/substack/stream-handbook https://github.com/substack/stream-handbook Gluing together various types of streams and stream transformers is a really nice way to build certain types of applications. Fortunately it should be easy to write a Stream compatible wrapper.

bryanlarsen 12y ago
what about https://www.npmjs.org/package/socket.io-stream https://www.npmjs.org/package/socket.io-stream?
- tlrobinson 12y ago
  That probably works fine, but if it's encapsulating a stream over Socket.io's protocol then it's going to be much less efficient than the other way around.
V1 12y ago
You could also just use Primus which exposes a Stream compatible wrapper by default for the client and server. https://github.com/primus/primus https://github.com/primus/primus (Primus uses engine.io,sockjs,browserchannel,websockets internally so you're no longer locked into a specific framework)
- EGreg 12y ago
  someone should do primus vs socket.io why would I need engine.io,websockets for example when engine.io already uses websockets if it can upgrade the connection to them?
  - lpinca 12y ago
    You can't use both. In Primus you can select only one transformer, listed above by V1, but if something doesn't work, you can just switch it with a single line of code. No rewrites, no need to learn a new API.
    - EGreg 12y ago
      I know you can't use both, but doesn't engine.io already support websockets?
      - lpinca 12y ago
        Yes it does, but if you are building something that works perfectly only using websockets (e.g. a command-line utility), why would you use engine.io? You can tell engine.io to only use websockets, but what's the point if you can use websockets directly and have the same API?

bryanlarsen 12y ago

what about https://www.npmjs.org/package/socket.io-stream https://www.npmjs.org/package/socket.io-stream?

tlrobinson 12y ago
That probably works fine, but if it's encapsulating a stream over Socket.io's protocol then it's going to be much less efficient than the other way around.

V1 12y ago

You could also just use Primus which exposes a Stream compatible wrapper by default for the client and server. https://github.com/primus/primus https://github.com/primus/primus (Primus uses engine.io,sockjs,browserchannel,websockets internally so you're no longer locked into a specific framework)

EGreg 12y ago
someone should do primus vs socket.io why would I need engine.io,websockets for example when engine.io already uses websockets if it can upgrade the connection to them?
- lpinca 12y ago
  You can't use both. In Primus you can select only one transformer, listed above by V1, but if something doesn't work, you can just switch it with a single line of code. No rewrites, no need to learn a new API.
  - EGreg 12y ago
    I know you can't use both, but doesn't engine.io already support websockets?
    - lpinca 12y ago
      Yes it does, but if you are building something that works perfectly only using websockets (e.g. a command-line utility), why would you use engine.io? You can tell engine.io to only use websockets, but what's the point if you can use websockets directly and have the same API?