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I've been reading quite a bit about this now, and feel like it's time to put it to the test. Only problem is: There aren't any native support out there. I know it's a bug for both Firefox and Webkit, which means it won't be long (hopefully) before they're in the nightlies. And I know Apache is (kinda) working on websocket support, but they seem to have been beaten by a 3rd party extension (experimental, as they call it).

So. To the question. Has anyone gotten to the point where they've successfully built their own Firefox or Webkit-browser with websockets, and gotten a server running that supports websockets? If so, could you post a quick how-to.

I've been trying to build Firefox, using the patch from the bugzilla, but it keeps getting rejected. I haven't looked at the 3rd party extension to Apache yet, but if you have, let me know (:

peirix
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    Does this belong on http://stackoverflow.com? – ChrisF Sep 25 '09 at 09:17
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    Does it? I wasn't sure. Since it's more about setting up the computer, than any specific programming language, I thought this was the best place for it. – peirix Sep 25 '09 at 09:44

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The Websockets APIs are close to finalized, it is the wire format that is still under review by the IETF (and the Web Apps group).

You can try Kaazing's Websocket gateway which also provides an emulation layer for older browsers lacking support for Websockets - Kaazing has support for vanilla JS, Flash, Silverlight, Java, and JavaFX.

  • Kaazing's gateway is really good for experimenting with the options once a websocket server is set up, but not so good for the actual set-up part, since it's not open source. Oh, well. Guess we'll just have to wait 'til the API's done. – peirix Oct 14 '09 at 12:58
  • Kaazing's gateway seems overly complex for doing experiments on. A websocket is a TCP socket with a very simple interface, and making a server in Java for playing around with should be very easy. – Marius Nov 07 '09 at 07:05
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I think it'd be a bit premature to put WebSocket support in the browser just yet, the API isn't finalised.

For now, you can use an emulated WebSocket that relies on Flash. gimite has one implementation, along with a Ruby backend. (But the backend of WebSocket is so simple you'll probably be writing your own server for it IMO. I'm really not at all sure what the point of tying that into Apache and the obsolescent mod_python is.)

bobince
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I set up an example project using a Ruby server and JavaScript clients. I use the "web-socket-flash" project to emulate WebSockets in older browsers. The instructions are included in the README.txt.

http://github.com/thefifthcircuit/websockpuppet

My README.txt also has links to some other useful resources.