paul-revere

2.2.1 • Public • Published

npm version

Paul Revere

Paul Revere is a lightweight wrapper for server-client WebSocket communication. It uses schemapack to encode buffers from JavaScript objects and delivers a smaller payload and faster parsing than traditional JSON messaging. On the browser, it wraps a vanilla WebSocket object, and on the server it wraps the ws package.

Paul Revere also accepts pub/sub adapters to allows for horizontal server scaling.

Server Usage

Paul Revere can be used with any Node server, though this example shows Express.

const express = require('express'),
    PaulRevere = require('paul-revere'),
    schemas = require('../shared/schemas'); // same module as client
 
/**
* Example schemas.js
* Follow schema rules found at https://github.com/phretaddin/schemapack
 
 exports.chat = {
  payload: {
  message: 'string',
  user: 'string'
  },
  meta: {
  timestamp: 'string'
  }
 };
 */
 
const app = express();
 
// Get Node server instance
const server = app.listen(3000, () => app.log.info('Paul Revere App listening on port 3000'));
 
// Pass your schemas and a Node server to start a Paul Revere WebSocket server
const paul = new PaulRevere(schemas, {server});
 
// Bind a client connection handler
paul.onConnection(client => {
 
    // The server exposes your schemas to broadcast messages to all clients
    // Pass a client as the second argument to exclude it from the broadcast
    paul.chat.broadcast({
        payload: {
            message: 'New user joined!',
            user: 'ChatBot'
        },
        meta: {
            timestamp: String(Date.now())
        }
    }, client); // Don't send this message to the client that just joined
 
    // Each client has its own schema instance to send messages directly to that client...
    client.chat.send({
        payload: {
            message: 'Welcome to Chat!',
            user: 'ChatBot'
        },
        meta: {
            timestamp: String(Date.now())
        }
    });
 
    // And also listen for messages from that client
    client.chat.onMessage(message => {
        // Broadcasting the message to all clients simplifies front end rendering and listeners
        // and is fast enough for non-optimistic updates
        paul.chat.broadcast(message);
    });
});

Client Usage

Paul Revere is supported on all browsers that support native WebSockets. http://caniuse.com/#feat=websockets

import PaulRevere from 'paul-revere';
import schemas from '../shared/schemas'; // same module as server
 
// Pass your schemas and a WebSocket address to connect to a Paul Revere server
const paul = new PaulRevere(schemas, {url: 'ws://localhost:3000'}),
 
// The client exposes your schemas to send messages to the server
paul.chat.send({
    payload: {
        message: 'Hello!',
        user: 'ClientBot'
    },
    meta: {
        timestamp: String(Date.now())
    }
});
 
 
// And also listen to messages from the server
paul.chat.onMessage(m => {
    console.log(m);
});

Server Adapters

In order to support horizontal server scaling, Paul Revere servers internally run off a pub/sub model for broadcasting messages. The default is nothing more than a stub function firing callbacks (see below). Custom adapters can be written and passed as the option pubSub when instantiating a server, and Paul Revere will use that instead. There is an official NATS adapter at paul-revere-nats-adapter.

Adapter API

Paul Revere servers need publicly accessible publish(subject, msg, exclude) and subscribe(subject, cb) methods. Nothing else is required to be exposed.

const pubSubAdapter = {
    // subject will always be an integer unique to a schema type, msg will always be a plain object, and exclude may be undefined or a string id
    publish(subject, msg, exclude) {
        // listeners are namespaced with 'paulrevere' just to ensure string keys
        // Your subject can be anything, so long as it is unique for every schema
        if(!this.listeners[`paulrevere.${subject}`]) return;
 
        this.listeners[`paulrevere.${subject}`].forEach(cb => cb(msg, exclude));
    },
 
    // subscriber callbacks expect a plain object msg, and also an exclude string id if passed in the schema.broadcast() method
    subscribe(subject, cb) {
        if(!this.listeners[`paulrevere.${subject}`]) this.listeners[`paulrevere.${subject}`] = [];
 
        this.listeners[`paulrevere.${subject}`].push(cb);
    },
 
    listeners: {}
};
 
const paul = new PaulRevere(schemas, {server, pubSub: pubSubAdapter});

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2.2.1

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MIT

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  • jfurfaro