ardxwe / cppwebsockets

A simple, lightweight c++ WebSockets server library

cppWebSockets

A simple, lightweight c++ WebSockets server library wrapped around the popular libwebsockets c library.

Usage

Create a class that extends WebSocketServer and implement the following callbacks

void onConnect(    int socketID                        ); // New websocket connection
void onMessage(    int socketID, const string& data    ); // Message received from connected client
void onDisconnect( int socketID                        ); // Client disconnect
void   onError(    int socketID, const string& message ); // Networking error

Then simply instantiate your server and call run()

MyServer s = MyServer( 8080 ); // MyServer extends WebSocketServer listening on port 8080
s.run( );

At any arbitrary time, you can push a message to a client by calling send( int socketID, string data ).

If your server is more complex and needs to monitor its own connections in addition to WebSocket connections, you can manage your own event loop. Instead of calling s.run( ), use the s.wait( ) function. A good illustration of this is located in examples/multiPollServer/multiPollServer.cpp

Features

• Implement your own web socket server in less than 50 lines of c++.
• OpenSSL support
• WebSocket RFC6455 implementation
• Abstracts away all c pointers and managing when sockets are writable
• Push data to any client at any time
• Key => Value storage for any socket with setValue( int socketID, const string& name, const string& value ); and getValue( int socketID, const string& name );

Examples

Check out the examples directory for fully implemented illustrations. There is a basic echo and chat server as well as a more complex server that manages multiple poll( ) loops. They should demonstrate how easy this library is to use and serve as basic scaffolding for your projects.

Dependencies

This is built on top of warmcat's wonderful, lightweight libwebsocket c library. To install:

mnisjk@localdev ~ $ git clone git://git.libwebsockets.org/libwebsockets
mnisjk@localdev ~ $ cd libwebsockets
mnisjk@localdev libwebsockets $ cmake .
mnisjk@localdev libwebsockets $ make
mnisjk@localdev libwebsockets $ sudo make install

Compile and run

All examples have Makefiles, so simply run make and then run the example. When creating your own projects, your compile commands will look like the following:

mnisjk@localdev ~ $ g++ -w -DLOG_TO_STDOUT=1 -omyserver Util.cpp WebSocketServer.cpp myserver.cpp -lwebsockets
mnisjk@localdev ~ $ ./myserver