Push notifications using Node.js socket.io on apache web-server

I am trying to understand how this all push notifications works. I tried to do some test of push technology but so far i failed.

The base assumptions are:
1) use Apache web-server as the main application web-server (mandatory since all our code is using that)
2) Cross-Browser push notification server in node.js Technology (offered socket.io since it is crossed browser).

So far i failed and here is my code (p1.html):

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>

<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>P1</title>
</head>
<body>

<h1>P1</h1>
<section id="content"></section>
<script src="/socket.io.js"></script> <!--socket.io-->
<script src="/socket.js"></script> <!--socket.io-client-->
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script>

var socket = io.connect('http://localhost:8080');

socket.on('notification', function (data) {
$('#content').append(data.message + '<br>')

});

</script>

</body>

</html>

and my server script (p1.js):

var app = require('http').createServer(handler)
, io = require('socket.io').listen(app)
, url = require('url')
app.listen(8080);

console.log("creating a connection");
io.sockets.on( 'connection', function ( socket ) {

console.log("runing time");
sendTimeMessage(socket);
});

function sendTimeMessage(socket){

console.log("in time");
var time= new Date().getTime();
console.log(time);
socket.volatile.emit( 'notification' , time );
setTimeout(sendTimeMessage, 5000);
}

function handler (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.end("");
}

function sendMessage(message) {

io.sockets.emit('notification', {'message': message});
}

  • i changed the IPs to local host for the example so i hope there is no mistake on the syntax.
  • when i run, the Apache web-server is the one that display the data and the idea is for the socket-io to update few fields.

current state:
1. If i don't add the socket.io-client js file i get reference error for socket.io-client
2. If i do add socket.io-client i get "ReferenceError: require is not defined [Break On This Error] 'undefined' != typeof io ? io : module.exports

i can really need help understanding it, and making it work. i am also open minded to alternative solutions i can really need help getting this done.

Working example, of what you want to achieve. First mistake is wrong javascript path on client-side, the right one is /socket.io/socket.io.js. Second mistake is use of socket.volatile which doesn't exist.

var app = require('http').createServer(handler)
, io = require('socket.io').listen(app)
, url = require('url')


console.log("creating a connection");

io.sockets.on( 'connection', function ( socket ) {
  console.log("runing time");
  sendTimeMessage(socket);
});

function sendTimeMessage(socket){
  console.log("in time");
  var now= new Date().getTime();
  socket.emit('notification', {'message': now});
  setTimeout(function() {
    socket.emit('notification', {'message': "after 5s"});
  },5000);
}

function handler (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
  res.end("<html><script src=\"/socket.io/socket.io.js\"></script> <!--socket.io--><script>io.connect().on('notification', function (data) {console.log(data)});</script></html>");
}

app.listen(8080);

Ok, i partially solved the with a huge help from the guys on IRC i created an: 1) HTML over Apache on port 80 2) live notification service update my HTML over port 8080

(there might still have code issue in the values arrived from the functions cause its not fully debuged)

p1.html (client)

<!doctype html>
<html>

<head>

<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<section id="content"></section>
<script src="/node_modules/socket.io-client/dist/socket.io.js"></script>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script>

var socket = io.connect('http://10.10.10.1:8080');

socket.on('notification', function (from,msg) {

$('#content').append(msg.message + '<br>')

});

</script>

</body>

</html>

p1.js (service)

var io = require('socket.io').listen(8080)
console.log("creating a connection");
io.sockets.on( 'connection', function ( socket ) {

console.log("runing time");
var oldtime= new Date().getTime();
while (1){

var newtime= new Date().getTime();
if (newtime%5323==0 && newtime != oldtime){

oldtime = newtime;
console.log(newtime);
socket.emit( 'notification' , {'message': "the time is - " + newtime} );

}

}

});

enjoy