Real-time web applications have traditionally been a challenging thing to achieve, relying on hacks and illusions. Many people avoid going real-time under the assumption of the complexity involved. This book will show you how to build modern, real-time web applications powered by Socket.IO, introducing you to various features of Socket.IO and walking you through the development, hosting, and scaling of a chat server.
Chapter 1, Going Real Time on the Web, introduces us to the world of real-time web applications and their history.
Chapter 2, Getting Started with Node.js, introduces Node.js and its friends. Node.js is the platform that empowers many modern web applications, which are all written in JavaScript.
Chapter 3, Let's Chat, gets us up and running with our first single-page chat system, introducing us to the Socket.IO API for real-time communication.
Chapter 4, Making It More Fun!, adds more features to our chat application, such as giving our users a name, having multiple chat rooms, and integrating express with Socket.IO sessions.
Chapter 5, The Socket.IO Protocol, explains the Socket.IO protocol, its mechanism and working.
Chapter 6, Deploying and Scaling, explains the intricacies involved in taking our chat system to production and scaling it out.
Appendix A, Socket.IO Quick Reference, is a reference for the Socket.IO API.
Appendix B, Socket.IO Backends, lists a few alternative backend implementations for different languages and platforms.