Broadcastt

Realtime web applications are the future. Broadcastt provides tools to help developers create realtime applications.

Javascript Client Library

Be aware that this library is still in beta and not reached the first MAJOR version.

Semantic Versioning 2.0.0

Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything may change at any time. The public API should not be considered stable.

This library is compatible with web browsers (compatible with RFC 6455) and Node.js.

Browser compatibility (source):

Protocol, version	Draft date	Internet Explorer	Firefox (PC, Android)	Chrome (PC, Mobile)	Safari (Mac, iOS)	Opera (PC, Mobile)	Android Browser
RFC 6455	December, 2011	10	11	16	6	12.10	4.4

This is a client library. If you are looking for a server library please check out our list of libraries.

For tutorials and more in-depth documentation, visit our official site.

Documentation

First steps

First you have to import the necessary library

ES6:

import Broadcastt from 'broadcastt-js';

ES5:

const Broadcastt = require('broadcastt-js');

Second you have to initialize a object

const socket = new Broadcastt(APP_KEY);

Configuration

const socket = new Broadcastt(APP_KEY, options);

host (String)

The library tries to connect to the given host. By design this used by our development team, but you can change this any time.

Default value: eu.broadcastt.xyz

port (Number)

The library tries to connect to the given port. By design this used by our development team, but you can change this any time.

Default value: 443 or 80 depending on the value of encrypted option

reconnectInterval (Number)

If anything goes wrong and the client disconnects, the library will try to reconnect. The delay between the reconnection attempts is determined by this and the number of retries.

Calculated this * <number of retries>. Which means the delay is incremented linearly.

Default value: 3000

activityTimeout (Number)

Can only be used by our development team, because the value given by you will be overridden after connection with the value sent by the server.

Default value: 120

pongTimeout (Number)

Determines the acceptable timeout for the pong message sent by the server for a ping message.

May become deprecated in later versions because RFC 6455 has Control Frames for ping and pong messages.

Default value: 30

authEndpoint (Number)

Relative or absolute url to be called by this library for private and presence channel authentication.

Default value: /broadcasting/auth

csrf (Number)

Cross-site request forgery token which will be set in the header as X-CSRF-TOKEN when calling the auth endpoint.

Default value: null

encrypted (Number)

Determines if ws or wss protocol should be called.

Default value: true

debug (Number)

If enabled the library will log events and method calls to the console.

Default value: false

maximumReconnects (Number)

Sets the maximum number of reconnects in a row. So if any reconnect attempts is successful the counter will reset.

Default value: 8

Subscription

Subscribe to Public channels

You can subscribe to a channel by invoking the join method of your socket object.

const channel = socket.join('channel-name');

This returns a Channel object

Subscribe to Private or Presence channels

You can subscribe to a private or presence channel the same way you would do for a public channel you just has to add private- or presence- depending on the type of the desired channel.

const channel = socket.join('private-channel-name');
const channel = socket.join('presence-channel-name');

Additionally you can call the private or presence method of your socket object where you don't need to add the prefix.

const channel = socket.private('channel-name');
const channel = socket.presence('channel-name');

If you already subscribed by calling these methods you get back the same objects as you did on the first call.

Private and presence channels will make a request to authEndpoint where you have to authenticate the subscription.

Unsubscribe

You can unsubscribe from a channel by calling the unsubscribe method of the channel object.

channel.unsubscribe();

Or by calling the leave method of your socket object.

socket.leave('channel-name');

Events

Bind

You can bind callbacks to events by calling the bind method on a channel object.

channel.bind('event-name', (payload) => {
    // Do what you want
});

Several callbacks can be added to the same event.

Unbind

You can remove all event bindings by calling unbind method on a channel object without any parameter.

channel.unbind();

You can also use the unbind method to remove every bindings of a event by calling it with a string parameter.

channel.unbind('event-name');

Also the unbind method can remove a specific callback by calling it with that callback as a parameter.

channel.unbind(null, your-callback-object);

Further more you can remove a specific callback from an event by passing the name and the callback.

channel.unbind('event-name', your-callback-object);

Contributing

We welcome everyone who would help us to make this library "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".