socket.io 4.6.0 on Node.js NPM

Bug Fixes

add timeout method to remote socket (#4558) (0c0eb00)
typings: properly type emits with timeout (f3ada7d)

Features

Promise-based acknowledgements

This commit adds some syntactic sugar around acknowledgements:

emitWithAck()

try {
  const responses = await io.timeout(1000).emitWithAck("some-event");
  console.log(responses); // one response per client
} catch (e) {
  // some clients did not acknowledge the event in the given delay
}

io.on("connection", async (socket) => {
    // without timeout
  const response = await socket.emitWithAck("hello", "world");

  // with a specific timeout
  try {
    const response = await socket.timeout(1000).emitWithAck("hello", "world");
  } catch (err) {
    // the client did not acknowledge the event in the given delay
  }
});

serverSideEmitWithAck()

try {
  const responses = await io.timeout(1000).serverSideEmitWithAck("some-event");
  console.log(responses); // one response per server (except itself)
} catch (e) {
  // some servers did not acknowledge the event in the given delay
}

Added in 184f3cf.

Connection state recovery

This feature allows a client to reconnect after a temporary disconnection and restore its state:

id
rooms
data
missed packets

Usage:

import { Server } from "socket.io";

const io = new Server({
  connectionStateRecovery: {
    // default values
    maxDisconnectionDuration: 2 * 60 * 1000,
    skipMiddlewares: true,
  },
});

io.on("connection", (socket) => {
  console.log(socket.recovered); // whether the state was recovered or not
});

Here's how it works:

the server sends a session ID during the handshake (which is different from the current id attribute, which is public and can be freely shared)
the server also includes an offset in each packet (added at the end of the data array, for backward compatibility)
upon temporary disconnection, the server stores the client state for a given delay (implemented at the adapter level)
upon reconnection, the client sends both the session ID and the last offset it has processed, and the server tries to restore the state

The in-memory adapter already supports this feature, and we will soon update the Postgres and MongoDB adapters. We will also create a new adapter based on Redis Streams, which will support this feature.

Added in 54d5ee0.

Compatibility (for real) with Express middlewares

This feature implements middlewares at the Engine.IO level, because Socket.IO middlewares are meant for namespace authorization and are not executed during a classic HTTP request/response cycle.

Syntax:

io.engine.use((req, res, next) => {
  // do something

  next();
});

// with express-session
import session from "express-session";

io.engine.use(session({
  secret: "keyboard cat",
  resave: false,
  saveUninitialized: true,
  cookie: { secure: true }
}));

// with helmet
import helmet from "helmet";

io.engine.use(helmet());

A workaround was possible by using the allowRequest option and the "headers" event, but this feels way cleaner and works with upgrade requests too.

Added in 24786e7.

Error details in the disconnecting and disconnect events

The disconnect event will now contain additional details about the disconnection reason.

io.on("connection", (socket) => {
  socket.on("disconnect", (reason, description) => {
    console.log(description);
  });
});

Added in 8aa9499.

Automatic removal of empty child namespaces

This commit adds a new option, "cleanupEmptyChildNamespaces". With this option enabled (disabled by default), when a socket disconnects from a dynamic namespace and if there are no other sockets connected to it then the namespace will be cleaned up and its adapter will be closed.

import { createServer } from "node:http";
import { Server } from "socket.io";

const httpServer = createServer();
const io = new Server(httpServer, {
  cleanupEmptyChildNamespaces: true
});

Added in 5d9220b.

A new "addTrailingSlash" option

The trailing slash which was added by default can now be disabled:

import { createServer } from "node:http";
import { Server } from "socket.io";

const httpServer = createServer();
const io = new Server(httpServer, {
  addTrailingSlash: false
});

In the example above, the clients can omit the trailing slash and use /socket.io instead of /socket.io/.

Added in d0fd474.

Performance Improvements

precompute the WebSocket frames when broadcasting (da2b542)