So my goal is to have node.js forward a specific url to an external server hosting a minecraft server.
First of all, how could I go about doing this? When trying to find a means to do this all I can seem to come up with in search results is how to setup node.js server for developing a game, or I find how to forward from one port to another on the same machine.
Secondly, concerning means of doing this, hoping I can do so in a method where the client now goes back and forth directly with the server rather than routing all data through the node.js server. The goal here isn't to obscure the server, just to provide an easier to remember url for the server. Mind you if that's not possible I'll just route it all through the server and see in time if there are any issues with such.
Edit for clarity:
I have a website setup using node.js at mydomain.com, it's a fairly simple setup, I'd like mydomain.com/mine to redirect to a minecraft server hosted by a different company.
I think the easiest way to solve this problem would involve creating an "A" record for your domain in your DNS panel on your web host. With an A record, you would have something like minecraft.mydomain.com redirect to your server's ip. Here's some information about A records: http://help.dnsmadeeasy.com/spry_menu/a-record/
Googling around about domain redirects to game servers makes me believe this should work, but I haven't done it myself.
It sounds like you just want to do a simple redirect.
Assuming your app is itself a node.js app, Here's a quick example redirecting my localhost:9000 to google.
var http = require('http');
var server = http.createServer(function (request, response) {
response.writeHead(301, {Location: 'http://google.com'});
response.end();
});
server.listen(9000);
console.log("http://127.0.0.1:9000/");
Related
I have a C# server side web service. but I don't want user can to see my requests like request tab from client's browsers.
now, I haven't been find any solution on SO.
what is the best solution to do this?
I think I can use a node.js server-side and render my reactjs inside it and my node.js send my requests to C# server side. like this:
React.js<--(render)--Node.js--(Send/Receive api's)-->C#
I don't know if I use a node.js server, my requests will be hidden from clients?
I don't want to use reactjs.net.
If you're making a HTTP request to node server, and making the stealth request from NodeJS to another server, that request will not be visible to the client.
Alternatively, you can make an encrypted request. Although URL and some part of encryption algorithm will still be exposed at client's end.
I searched the web to see if there was a way to send files (photos, videos, messages) to a user using an app. I couldn't find any clear examples or explanations on how to achieve it.
I have no idea, how to do this. Can anyone tell me how this can be done? Any help will be appreciated. I should also probably mention that the ultimate goal of this app is a messaging application.
Not sure what you mean by "sending files" to a user, but if you want them to download a file using javascript, you could use this excellent jQuery plugin: http://jqueryfiledownload.apphb.com/
Of course, there are many alternatives, such as creating an invisible iframe and then loading the url to the file you want your users to download into that iframe. You can read more about this over here: Download File Using Javascript/jQuery
Hope it helps!
First let me tell you that you can use Kandy js sdk, you can find about it here : https://developer.kandy.io/, I didn't test it but it looks very promising and provides many of the features you need.
In case you want to do it on your own(or you're just curious), WebSockets is the main gamer here.
Http protocol as you should know by now is a request-response protocol, the client make a request to the server and the server responds.
But sometimes we want the server to talk to the client in which we can use SSE(Server-Sent events), in other times we want to create a connection between the server and the client and we want both to be able to send to it and receive from it, that's what WebSockets are made for.
In your usecase you could have two strategies : peer-to-peer or centralized, in centralized strategy when user X wants to send something to user Y it has to first send it to the server and the server sends it to user Y.
For this you need websockets, you create a connection between user X and the server and another between the Server and user Y, you send the file from user X to the connection, the server then sends it through the other connection to user Y, user Y can send a new file to the Server so that the Server sends it to user X, and so on so goes.
From this you can conclude that Websockets has server part and client part, normally we launch websockets server that is different than the web server serving the application(both can be on the same Server computer or in different computers), if you don't want to bring your own server you can look at pusher : https://pusher.com/.
Pusher is a cloud service that provide sdks for many languages including javascript, in case you want to have your own server I can't talk about the server-side part of your problem because your question is a javascript question, for the client-part have a look at socket.io, this provides the client part as well as node server part but you can use the client part in case you don't want to use node for the server.
In case you want to build peer-to-peer connections, you can look at simple-peer.
I'm creating an app where the server and the clients will run on the same local network. Is it possible to use web sockets, or rather more specifically, socket.io to have one central server and many clients that are running native apps
? The way I understand socket.io to work is that the clients read the web-pages that are served from the server but what happens when your clients become tablet devices running native apps instead of web pages in a browser?
The scenario I'm working with at the minute will have one central server containing a MEAN app and the clients (iPads) will make GET requests to the data available on the server. However, I'd also like there to be real-time functionality so if someone triggers a POST request on their iPad, the server acknowledges it and displays it in the server's client-side. The iPad apps will (ideally) be running native phonegap applications rather than accessing 192.168.1.1:9000 from their browser.
Is this technically possible to connect to the socket server from the native apps or would the devices have to send POST requests to a central server that's constantly listening for new 'messages'? I'm totally new to the whole real-time stuff so I'm just trying to wrap my head around it all.
Apologies if this isn't totally clear, it's a bit hard to describe with just text but I think you get the idea?
Correct me if I am wrong.
You have multiple iPads running native app. They send a POST request to your node JS server which is running in a computer in the same local network. Whenever the server receives a request from app, you want to display that a request has been received in your computer screen.
If my assumptions about the scenario is correct, then it is fairly easy to do. Here are the steps to do it.
Create a small webpage (front end). Load socket IO in the front end page like this -
<script type="text/javascript" src="YOUR_SERVER_IP/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>
Then connect to server using var socket = io(). This should trigger connection event in your backend.
Handle all POST request from apps normally. Nothing special. Just add a small snippet in between. socket.emit('new_request', request_data). This sends new_request event to front end.
Handle the new_request in your front end using socket.on('new_request', function(request_data) { ... });. That's it. No need to add anything to your native app for realtime update.
The second step would be a little complicated as it is necessary to make socket variable available inside all POST requests. Since you chose node.js, I don't think you need any help with that.
Not totally clear on your project, but I'll try to give you some pointers.
An effective way to send data between native apps and a server is using a REST server. REST is based on HTTP requests and allows you to modify data on the server, which can connect to your database. The data returned is typically either JSON or XML formatted. See here for a brief intro: http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-introduction
Android/iOS/etc have built in APIs for making HTTP requests. Your native app would send a request to the server, parse the response, and update your native UI accordingly. The same server can be used from a website using jQuery ajax HTTP requests.
Express.js is more suited to serving web pages and includes things like templating. Look into "restify" (see here: mcavage.me/node-restify/) if you just want to have a REST server that handles requests. Both run on top of node.js (nodejs.org).
As far as real-time communication, if you're developing for iOS look into APNS (Apple Push Notification Service). Apple maintains a persistent connection, and by going through their servers you can easily send messages to your app. The equivalent of this on Android is GCM (Google Cloud Messaging).
You can also do sockets directly if that's easier for you. Be careful with maintaining an open socket on a mobile device though, it can be a huge battery drain. Here's a library for connecting ObjC to Socket.IO using websockets, it may be useful for you: https://github.com/pkyeck/socket.IO-objc
Hope that helps!
To answer your question, it is definitely possible. Socket.io would serve as the central server that can essentially emit messages to all of the client. You can also make Socket.io listen for the messages from any of the clients and serve the emitted message to the rest of the clients.
Here's an example of how socket.io can be used. Simply clone, npm install, and run using 'node app.js'
All you have to do is to provide a valid server address when you connect your socket from the iPad clients:
var socket = io.connect( 'http://my.external.nodejs.server' );
Let us know if you need help with actual sending/receiving of socket events.
It is possible to connect to Websockets from your apps.
If you are using PhoneGap then you need a pluging that gives support to websockets in your app (the client) and then use websocket like normal way using Javascript see this.
If your app is native iOS look into this it could help you.
The primary use of the Sockets in your case is to be a bidirectional "pipe" between an app and server. There is no need of server sending the whole web-page to the native app. All what you need is to send some data from server to the client(app) in response to POST (or GET) request and then using this data on client side to update client's UI in real-time. If you are going to use moderate amount of devices (say tens of them), you may have connected all of them to the server permanently keeping individual socket connection open for every individual link server-to-app. Thus you may deliver data and update client's state in real time.
In fact web browsers also employ sockets to communicate to web servers. However as in general case there is no control on amount of concurrent clients in Internet, for the sake of limited networking resources conservation, servers do not keep sockets open for a long time, closing it just after the web-page was sent to client (or timeout has expired). That's how HTTP protocol works on the low level. The server waiting for the HTTP clients (browsers) by listening the 80 port, responding them by sending the whole web page content, then closing the connection and keep waiting for another requests on the same port.
In your case it's basically a good idea to use socket.io as it's a uniform implementation of sockets (ok WebSockets) on both client and server side. The good starting point is here
Is it possible to allow two clients interact directly without a server?
I am referring to websites, for example is it possible to create a chat between two clients that are on the same website using only javascript on the client-side.
If not, what's the minimum server-side to make a chat work between active clients on a website? (eg: one PHP file and no database) ?
My idea:
Storing the conversation would be easily done using localStorage on each client, the problem is how to send some data from client1 to client2 without storing anything (or at most that message) in the database. Also, note that "past" conversations should not visible, so no storage needed for that.
Note that I don't want any nodeJS or websocket solutions, I want something as simple as possible. So, what's the minimum code and files to make a chat between online users?
The WebRTC APIs will allow JavaScript to initiate a direct browser-to-browser connection, but a server is still required to serve the page and coordinate session initiation.
The APIs are still rapidly evolving and only available in bleeding-edge browsers, so it's not yet ready for real production use.
However—to be honest—for what you're trying to do, the easiest option is Node and socket.io:
var http=require('http'), express=require('express'), sio = require('socket.io')
, app=express(), srv = http.createServer(app);
app.use(express.static(__dirname+'/static'));
sio.listen(srv);
srv.listen(80);
...and now you have a working websockets server in 5 lines. Put all your client-side stuff in the static folder and you're good to go.
HTML5 has got a new Web Sockets feature
With this the server intervention is almost nullified..The server and client communicate through the new protocols
ws - Web Sockets protocol
wss - Web Sockets Secure protocol (similar to https)
Live demo
No, It's not possible. If you want a chat box, you have to store the data in the server. And what connects the clients, like display the chat texts and the same things to every client, they come from the server.. So it's not possible like that. Well, even free chat boxes put the data of each sites in their servers.
As for your idea using localStorage, maybe it's possible (But still, using the new WebSocket protocol), but it doesn't work in the time dimension, right? if another user joins, they won't see what has been sent before.
i've made some chat application in Node.js with now.js. And now I think up about something.
There are two files.. server.js, and client.js and everyone can steal client.js file and run it on another hosting to get benefits of my server.js work. How can I prevent it?
This is about that client.js connect with host by domain and port:
window.now = nowInitialize("http://address.com:6564");
How make it more secure, for example only clients (js files) from my host(address.com) can connect with my host.
If your concern is that other servers can use your server with the client code:
this should not be an issue because of the Same Origin Policy. Only if your server specifically allows it, will clients from other hosts be able to communicate with it.
Just try it out from a different domain name (or even localhost): you will see your browser won't let you make cross-domain requests.
(As an example, you can see this StackOverflow post were a user could not get Socket.IO working over different host/post combinations.)
UPDATE
It would work like this:
How does your users get authentified into you chat? Is there a registration or anything?
Maybe a token or a secure key would do it? Or a secure cookie ( sorry ... but at least invisible to the user ) with the said token? And without a token you couldn't access your services?