accessing socket outside the socket.on('connection') closure

Question

accessing socket outside the socket.on('connection') closure

Below is part of app.js, it has socket connection with client

io.sockets.on('connection', function (soc) {
    soc.emit('news', { status: 'connected' });
});

What I want to do is access the soc var outside the connection closure, like this

io.sockets.on('connection', function (soc) {
        do something magical here so I can access soc from outside
});
soc.emit('news', { status: 'connected' });

What additional technique need to add in to archive this structure?

node.js
express
socket.io

Answer 1

you need to reference your socket io variable in your server code:

io.sockets.emit('news', { status: 'connected' });

so in your sample code, it could look something like this:

io.sockets.on('connection', function (soc) {
    emit();
});

function emit(){
    io.sockets.emit('news', { status: 'connected' });
}

Answer 2

Maybe you could try something like this:

var foo;

io.on('connection', function(soc){
    foo = new Foo(soc);
});

function Foo (socket){
    this.emit = function () {
        if(socket)
        {
            socket.emit('msg');
        }
    }
}

After somebody is connected you can call foo.emit();

This answer might help you: Can't emit from method defined outside of socket connection