Working with socket.io dynamic namespaces

Summary

Problem
Solution

Dynamic namespaces in socket.io are not possible at the moment but I was given the task to build a chat which is working for different namespaces.

As any programmer I started to dig on the net how to build dynamic namespaces with socket.io, by reading the documentation I found that they do not support yet this feature.

Found an answer at Dynamic namespaces socket.io on stackoverflow, and I thought I need something in this manner.

Problem

In order to have a dynamic namespace there is needed a first peer to subscribe to the namespace.

In other words the first user who will connect will create the namespace, and after the users can just connect to existing one.

Solution

I ll present my solution for the backend part and frontend part.
The backend will contain 2 files:

backend/
 - server.js
 - io-handler.js

io-handler.js

// io-handler.js

const { EventEmitter } = require('events');
const url = require('url');

const eventEmitter = new EventEmitter();
const namespacesCreated = {};

const routes = {
  chat: /category\/(\d+)\/item\/(\d+)\/chat/,
};

const ee = new EventEmitter();
const namespacesCreated = {}; // will store the existing namespaces

module.exports = (io) => {
  io.sockets.on('connection', (socket) => {
    const { ns } = url.parse(socket.handshake.url, true).query;
    let matched = false;

    if (!ns) { // if there is not a ns in query disconnect the socket
      socket.disconnect();
      return { err: 'ns not provided' };
    }

    Object.keys(routes).forEach((name) => {
      const matches = ns.match(routes[name]);

      if (matches) {
        matched = true;
        if (!namespacesCreated[ns]) { // check if the namespace was already created
          namespacesCreated[ns] = true;
          io.of(ns).on('connection', (nsp) => {
            const evt = `dynamic.group.${name}`; // emit an event four our group of namespaces
            ee.emit(evt, nsp, ...matches.slice(1, matches.length));
          });
        }
      }
    });

    if (!matched) { // if there was no match disconnect the socket
      socket.disconnect();
    }
  });

  return ee; // we can return the EventEmitter to be used in our server.js file
};

ee.on('dynamic.group.chat', (socket, categoryId, itemId) => {
  // implement your chat logic
});

server.js

Now let's build an express server with our ioHandler

// server.js
const app = require('express')();
const server = require('http').Server(app);
const io = require('socket.io')(server);

//  we will load the io-handler module and will attach the connection listeners
require('./io-handler')(io);

server.listen(80);

frontend integration

import io from 'socket.io-client';

const namespace = '/category/1/item/2/chat'

const socket = io.connect(`${serverIoUrl}/${namespace}`, {
  query: `ns=${namespace}`,
  resource: 'socket.io'
});

socket.on('topic', () => {
  // implement your client side logic
});

In conclusion we managed to extend the socket.io to use dynamic namespaces.

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