2. Arrabiata Solutions
::
As a specialist for digital solutions we offer our clients all services from
conception to realization, support and optimization. Our focus is international
with offices in Munich and London. Arrabiata Solutions was founded in 2006
and has more than 30 employees with a combined experience of over 100
successful projects. ::
Arrabiata is a full-service digital agency.
4. Status Quo
• GET requests via anything with an src attribute
– No restrictions
– Only possible to provide URL
• Any (browser-supported) HTTP verb via
XMLHttpRequest
– Can set headers and HTTP body
– Restricted by SOP (same-origin policy)
• Protocol, domain, port
• Still using HTTP
5. Working around SOP: JSONP
• JSON with padding
• Ajax call:
– <script src="http://domain/file.ashx?jsonp=func">
</script>
• Return value:
– func([1, 2, 3]);
• „Padding“ is „func“
• Works in virtually any browser
• Still is kinda hackish
6. CORS
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing
• Works around the Same Origin Policy
• Restrictions must be met, though
– Specific Content-type header
– Origin header
– Server uses Access-Control-Allow-Origin header
(value must be * or Origin header for the browser
to proceed)
• Advanced approach: preflighted requests (e.g.
for POST requests to avoid CSRF)
7. Messaging API
• Simple cross-domain mechanism to
send/receive data
• Works everywhere except IE7-, and limited in
IE8+
• Sending:
– Access other window (e.g. contentWindow
property of an iframe)
– Use postMessage() method to send data (1st
argument)
– For security reasons, use origin of target site as
2nd argument
8. Messaging API (2)
• Receiving:
– Wait for window‘s message event.
– Event arguments contain the data sent (data
property) and the origin of the sender (origin
property)
– Use postMessage() to send data back to the
origin
– Sender may use the message event as well to
process the data from the receiver.
9. Server-Sent Events
• JavaScript API for long polling requests
• Server continously sends data, the client just
receives and processes them
• Step 1: subscribe to source
– var es = new EventSource("polling.ext");
• Step 2: listen to message event
– es.onmessage = function(ev) {
console.log(ev.data);
};
• Works almost everywhere except IE
11. Reconnecting to the Server
• Browser reconnects the connection every
few seconds (unless changed by retry
stream value)
• Browser sends Last-Event-ID HTTP header if
server sent ID before
• Allows server to only send new events
12. Web Sockets
• Full duplex communication
• Circumvents a few of the disadvantages of
HTTP (metadata sent with each request, re-
establishment of the connection, etc.)
• Works in all recent browsers except IE9-
14. API for Web Sockets
• Server: depends on the technology used; node.js is the
poster child of the month
• Client:
– var w = new WebSocket("ws://server:1234");
– w.onopen = function(ev) {
w.send("Hi!");
}
w.onmessage = function(ev) {
console.log(ev.data);
}
15. Websocket Server with node.js
var server = require('http');
var webSocketServer = require("websocket").server;
server.listen(1234);
var wsServer = new webSocketServer({
httpServer: server
});
wsServer.on('request', function(request) {
…
});
16. Socket.IO
• There are countless protocol versions for Web Sockets
• Better use an abstraction layer that also provides polyfills
for browsers that use an older API version, e.g. Socket.IO
(http://socket.io/).
• Server:
– var io = require("socket.io").listen(1234);
• Client:
– var ws = io.connect("http://127.0.0.1:1234");
