Serve Websocket And Http Server At Same Address On Node.js

I have set up a Websocket server on port 8888, using Node.js. I also have an interface for that which interacts with the Websocket backend (chat server). How do I serve the index.

Solution 1:

If you don't want to use socket.io, but the websocket package, you can use it in combination with Express like this:

// app.jsvar WebSocketServer = require('websocket').server;
var express         = require('express');
var app             = express();
var server          = app.listen(8888);
var wsServer        = new WebSocketServer({ httpServer : server });

// this will make Express serve your static files
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));

// the rest of your code
wsServer.on('request', function(r) { ...

express.static will take care of serving your HTML/CSS/JS files. The argument you pass is the directory where those files are located (in this case, the directory public/ relative to where app.js is located).

Solution 2:

Here are some good gist's how the set up a websocket server incl. serving an webapp for that:

• https://gist.github.com/johnhunter/1456613 (express.js + socket.io)
• https://gist.github.com/damianb/4190316 (expressjs + socket.io + passport + redis)

Here are also similar questions:

• How to use ExpressJS and Socket.io on a same port?
• Express & Socket.io Route parroting/copying/sharing