I want to add a Service to my Android app which runs in the background holding a WebSocket connection (possibly over several hours or even days) and regularly sends some data to a server.
Now there seems to be a bunch of WebSocket libraries for Java, and I'm not sure which one I should use:
TooTallNate/Java-WebSocket Description from GitHub: A barebones WebSocket client and server implementation written in 100% Java. http://java-websocket.org/ -- This one is linked in my first result of googling "android websocket". However, it has quite a few open issues, especially about SSL connections, and it doesn't seem to be actively maintained at the moment.
koush/AndroidAsync Description from GitHub: Asynchronous socket, http (client+server), websocket, and socket.io library for android. Based on nio, not threads. -- Again many open issues, but seems to be activiley maintained/worked on.
Project Tyrus Description from Website: JSR 356: Java API for WebSocket - Reference Implementation -- This is made by Oracle. Not sure if it works in Android.
Jetty WebSocket Client API Info from Website: Jetty also provides a Jetty WebSocket Client Library to write make talking to WebSocket servers easier. -- Again: Not sure if it works in Android.
codebutler/android-websockets Description from GitHub: Bare minimum websockets (hybi13/RFC) client for Android -- This one is used in schwiz/android-websocket-example, which is the accepted answer for the StackOverflow-question "How to make the Android device hold a TCP connection to Internet without wake lock?".
Atmosphere/wasync Description from GitHub: WebSockets with fallback transports client library for Node.js, Android and Java http://async-io.org
TakahikoKawasaki/nv-websocket-client Description from GitHub: High-quality WebSocket client implementation in Java.
square/okhttp Description from GitHub: An HTTP+SPDY client for Android and Java applications. http://square.github.io/okhttp/ -- It has a Websocket module.
In addition, there is a native socket.io client library for Android:
To use the socket.io Android client would be handy for me, because I plan to use nodejs/socket.io for the web frontend anyway. But the native client is quite young and has several open issues. And in addition to that, it is my understanding that an android app does not have any benefit of using the socket.io client library (apart from being compatible with socket.io 1.0 server), because WebSocket support can be assured at the client side.
My requirements are as follows:
Any suggestions which one is the right library for these requirements?
Some notes.
koush/AndroidAsync does not perform the closing handshake which is required by RFC 6455. See this for details.
Project Tyrus works on Android, but make sure that its license (CDDL 1.1 and GPL 2 with CPE) and its size (Reducing WebSocket client jar size with ProGuard) meet your requirements.
A 2-year-ago email thread in jetty-users mailing list says "We currently have no Android compatible Jetty 9 WebSocket client. There are plans to attempt to backport the Jetty WebSocket Client from JDK 7 to JDK 5/6 for android use, but its a lower priority than finishing our implementation of JSR-356 Java WebSocket API (javax.websocket)." Jetty's current document about its WebSocket Client API does not mention anything about Android.
Consideration points in selecting a WebSocket client implementation written in Java:
SSLSocketFactory
and SSLContext
should be able to be utilized without unnecessary restrictions.nv-websocket-client covers all the above except the last two. In addition, one of its small but convenient features is to send ping/pong frames periodically. It can be achieved just by calling setPingInterval
/setPongInterval
methods (See JavaDoc).