mxcl / mbwebsocketserver

An objc draft 10 websocket implementation

Open before closed.

The future is decentralized.

mbwebsocketserver's Issues

Server should be able to gracefully close

Needs a close method to stop the server gracefully. If this is not done and the object is just set to nil then the clients continue to stay connected.

I propose something like the following.

// MBWebSocketServer.h
- (void)closeServer;

// MBWebSocketServer.m
- (void)closeServer {
    _port = 0;
    _delegate = nil;
    [socket setDelegate:nil];
    [socket disconnect];
    [connections removeAllObjects];

    NSError *error = nil;
}

Delegate receives too much unmasked data

The unmasked NSData that are being allocated in socket:didReadData:withTag: (tag = 6) isn't cut to it's correct size before sending it to the delegate. Therefore the delegate method, webSocketServer:didReceiveData:fromConnection:, gets called with too much data (= unmaskedData + waste data).

Support Ping/Pong

Please support Ping/Pong at the low level.

This will really help for the server to know if clients are still connected to the server.

It's very easy to implement, just need to allow the opCode and automatically respond to it.
Any payload passed is automatically sent back to the client as is.

Ping RFC
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455#section-5.5.2
Pong RFC
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455#section-5.5.3

As the code is really undocumented and uses lots of bit shifting it's a little bit complicated for me to modify myself. Hoping the author can help out with this?

Ability to send only to specific connection(s)

Depending on how the server is used, it sometimes only needs to deal with specific connections. For example, disconnect a specific connection or send data to a specific connection(s).

In my case I was having the server manage sessions which clients could join/leave. So I added the following (very simple) code.

// MBWebSocketServer.h
- (void)disconnectConnection:(GCDAsyncSocket *)aConnection;
- (void)sendToConnection:(GCDAsyncSocket *)aConnection data:(id)object;
- (void)sendToConnections:(NSArray *)aCollectionsArray data:(id)object;

// MBWebSocketServer.m
- (void)sendToConnection:(GCDAsyncSocket *)aConnection data:(id)object {
    NSData *payload = [object webSocketFrameData];
    [aConnection writeData:payload withTimeout:-1 tag:3];
}

- (void)sendToConnections:(NSArray *)aCollectionsArray data:(id)object {
    id payload = [object webSocketFrameData];
    for (GCDAsyncSocket *connection in aCollectionsArray) {
        [connection writeData:payload withTimeout:-1 tag:3];
    }
}

- (void)disconnectConnection:(GCDAsyncSocket *)aConnection {
    [aConnection disconnect];
}

Occasionally header gets corrupted

Sometimes the header key gets corrupted at the server (somewhere) before hashing and it is sent back as the wrong key to the client.

See the following log

MBWebSocketServer Concatenated Key: 83x1Pg9CUHJtPIJxX0cAyQ==258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11
WebSocketClient Concatenated Key: ai0oBykize/qngGfSrH3Sw==258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11

It looks like there is an issue when reading the key before it gets to the hashing stage. This only happens maybe 1/20 times.