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Using Socket.IO from Node.js to connect to external server

Background: I have a node.js server running on my localhost (call this Server A); and an external server running node.js at https://example.net:3000 (call this Server B). I do not control or have access to Server B (it is a dashboard site for an IoT device in my home), but I need to connect to is using socket.io and emit a specific message.
I can connect to it easily from a flat javascript file (client-side), but need it running server side (ultimate goal is to make it into something I can call with an HTTP request); and examples such as How to connect two node.js servers with websockets? suggest I should be able to use socket.io-client from node.js with nearly the same code to achieve the same results. But when I run the code from node.js, I cannot connect to the socket.
Below is the code that works successfully in flat javascript file. I know it works because I see 'socket connect' in the console, and I can also test for the the socket emit at the end.
var myemail = "email#gmail.com";
var device_id = '12345';
// Create SocketIO instance, connect
var socket = io.connect('https://example.net:3000');
socket.on('connect', function(){
try {
console.log('socket connect');
socket.emit('configure', {email:myemail, deviceid:device_id});
} catch(e) {
console.log(e);
}
});
socket.emit("/" + device_id, "45678");
...and below is the code I cannot get to work when running from my node.js instance. I'd expect a message 'socket connect' in the command line log and get nothing.
var express=require('express');
var http=require('http');
var app=express();
var server = http.createServer(app);
//Variables
var myemail = "email#gmail.com";
var device_id = '12345';
var io = require('socket.io-client');
var socket = io.connect('https://example.net:3000');
//Connect listener
socket.on('connect', function(){
try {
console.log('socket connect');
socket.emit('configure', {email:myemail, deviceid:device_id});
} catch(e) {
console.log(e);
}
});
socket.emit("/" + device_id, "45678");
Any ideas?
UPDATE
Ran debug utility, results included as linked image below. Key thing I see is that engine.io tries to do an xhr poll, and gets a 503 response back from the server. (Obviously not a true 'temporary error' with the server as again, this all works from running client-side js in chrome).
debugging output image link

Solved this - issue was that the server I was connecting to required use of https, so I needed to add
{secure: true, rejectUnauthorized: false}
after the url to connect to.
Full working example:
const myemail = email#email.com;
const device_id = 12345;
io = require('socket.io-client');
var socket = io.connect('https://server.net:3000',{secure: true, rejectUnauthorized: false});
function doStuff(){
//Listener
socket.on('connect', function(){
try {
console.log('socket connect');
socket.emit('configure', {email:myemail, deviceid:device_id});
} catch(e) {
console.log(e);
}
});
socket.emit("/" + device_id, "003021");
}
doStuff();

I think the line causing the issue is :
var socket = io.connect('https://example.net:3000');
I managed to make a working example using this code :
const myemail = "email#gmail.com";
const device_id = '12345';
var socket = require('socket.io-client')('https://example.net:3000');
socket.on('connect', function(){
try{
console.log('socket connect');
socket.emit('configure', {email:myemail, deviceid:device_id});
}catch(e){ console.log(e); }
});

Nodejs lookup of known bluetooth device

Is it possible to perform a lookup of a Bluetooth device given its address in a Nodejs script?
There are a few packages out there, the main one being Noble. However, they all focus around scanning, and not looking up a known address (as far as i can tell anyway!).
What i want to achieve, is to look up a known address, to see if the device can be found.
Much like PyBluez does for Python:
bluetooth.lookup_name('CC:20:E8:8F:3A:1D', timeout=5)
In Python, this can find the device even if it is undiscoverable, unlike a typical inquiry scan would.

I had this same problem and just found the btwatch lib, but it isn't working for me on the latest raspbian. But the source is just calling l2ping and looking for a string that I'm guessing no longer prints on success, so the modified code below works instead, similar to the lookup_name method, once you have l2ping installed (I think npm bluetooth or pybluez has it)
var Spawn = require('child_process').spawn;
function detectMacAddress(macAddress, callback)
{
//var macAddress = '72:44:56:05:79:A0';
var ls = Spawn('l2ping', ['-c', '1', '-t', '5', macAddress]);
ls.stdout.on('data', function (data) {
console.log("Found device in Range! " + macAddress);
callback(true);
});
ls.on('close', function () {
console.log("Could not find: " + macAddress);
callback(false);
});
}
Or, a synchronous way,
var execSync = require('child_process').execSync;
function detectMacAddressSync(macAddress)
{
var cmd = 'l2ping -c 1 -t 5 ' + macAddress;
try
{
var output = execSync(cmd );
console.log("output : "+ output );
return true;
}
catch(e)
{
console.log("caught: " + e);
return false;
}
}

As far as I have understood the problem you want to connect to the device using address. Then, I would suggest using node-bluetooth-serial-port.
var btSerial = new (require('bluetooth-serialport')).BluetoothSerialPort();
btSerial.on('found', function(address, name) {
btSerial.findSerialPortChannel(address, function(channel) {
btSerial.connect(address, channel, function() {
console.log('connected');
btSerial.write(new Buffer('my data', 'utf-8'), function(err, bytesWritten) {
if (err) console.log(err);
});
btSerial.on('data', function(buffer) {
console.log(buffer.toString('utf-8'));
});
}, function () {
console.log('cannot connect');
});
// close the connection when you're ready
btSerial.close();
}, function() {
console.log('found nothing');
});
});
BluetoothSerialPort.findSerialPortChannel(address, callback[, errorCallback])
Checks if a device has a serial port service running and if it is found it passes the channel id to use for the RFCOMM connection.
callback(channel) - called when finished looking for a serial port on the device.
errorCallback - called the search finished but no serial port channel was found on the device. Connects to a remote bluetooth device.
bluetoothAddress - the address of the remote Bluetooth device.
channel - the channel to connect to.
[successCallback] - called when a connection has been established.
[errorCallback(err)] - called when the connection attempt results in an error. The parameter is an Error object.

Auto-connecting to specific device with serialport in Node.js

I am pretty new to node and asynchronous programming (I come from a C background), and I am having trouble auto-connecting to a port that has a device with a certain vendorID using serialport in Node.js. I have everything working separately, ie. I can connect to a port, and I can find a port with a certain vendorID, but I can not connect to the port that I found. Here is the code I have so far:
var SerialPort = require('serialport');
var MYport;
SerialPort.list(function (err, ports) {
ports.forEach(function(port) {
if(port.vendorId == 9999){
console.log('Found It')
MYport = port.comName.toString();
console.log(MYport);
}
});
});
var port = new SerialPort(MYport, {
parser: SerialPort.parsers.readline('\n')
});
When this is run I get an error due to the fact that MYport is not defined at the time that the port is created and connected to.
I know that I will most likely have to use a call back function but I just can't figure it out.
Thanks for the help

SerialPort.list is async function,
so you need place the connection to serialport after emit callback of async function.
like this:
var SerialPort = require('serialport');
var MYport;
SerialPort.list(function (err, ports) {
ports.forEach(function(port) {
if(port.vendorId == 9999){
console.log('Found It')
MYport = port.comName.toString();
console.log(MYport);
}
});
var port = new SerialPort(MYport, {
parser: SerialPort.parsers.readline('\n')
});
});

(crypto.js) TypeError: Data must be string or buffer

I am currently using crypto.js module to hash things. It was working for a while then I started getting this error:
Here is the foundation of my server:
process.stdout.write('\033c'); // Clear the console on startup
var
express = require("express"),
app = express(),
http = require("http").Server(app),
io = require("socket.io")(http),
path = require("path"),
colorworks = require("colorworks").create(),
fs = require("fs"),
crypto = require("crypto");
function md5(msg){
return crypto.createHash("md5").update(msg).digest("base64");
}
function sha256(msg) {
return crypto.createHash("sha256").update(msg).digest("base64");
}
http.listen(443, function(){
// Create the http server so it can be accessed via 127.0.0.1:443 in a web browser.
console.log("NJ project webserver is running on port 443.");
// Notify the console that the server is up and running
});
app.use(express.static(__dirname + "/public"));
app.get("/", function(request, response){
response.sendFile(__dirname + "/public/index.html");
});
I am aware that these functions are creating the problem:
function md5(msg){
return crypto.createHash("md5").update(msg).digest("base64");
}
function sha256(msg) {
return crypto.createHash("sha256").update(msg).digest("base64");
}
The problem being, if these functions don't work (which they don't anymore), roughly 200 lines of code will go to waste.

This error is triggered by attempting to hash a variable that does not exist:
function md5(msg){
return crypto.createHash("md5").update(msg).digest("base64");
}
function sha256(msg) {
return crypto.createHash("sha256").update(msg).digest("base64");
}
md5(non_existent); // This variable does not exist.

What kind of data are you trying to hash ? Where does it come from ?
I would check the value of msg first then I would try :
crypto.createHash('md5').update(msg.toString()).digest('hex');
You could also use these packages instead:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/md5
https://www.npmjs.com/package/js-sha256

why web socket behave differently on nodejs ?

I have a Nodejs Server.js code :
first Concept :
var http = require('http');
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var path = require('path');
var conn= http.createServer(app).listen(3000, function () {
console.log("server Running at Port 3000");
});
var WebSocketServer = require('ws').Server;
var wss = new WebSocketServer({server: conn});
and i have a index.html code with java script :
<html>
<body>
<script src="myscript.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
inside myscript.js i have :
var connection = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:3000');
This is working fine when i open http://localhost:3000 on browser .
second Concept :
my server.js :
var WebSocketServer = require('ws').Server,
wss = new WebSocketServer({ port: 3000}) ;
wss.on('connection', function (connection) {
});
wss.on('listening', function () {
console.log("Server started...");
});
and HTML and client java script is similar as above .
This is not working when i open http://localhost:3000 on browser . why ? i want to clarify my doubt . Why the first method working and second is not working ?

To specifically answer your question: why web socket behave differently on nodejs? the answer is: It shouldn't. In the second version of your code you are not serving any HTML or JS files to the client on the port 3000 so the browser can't download any HTML.
If you want it to work as expected then you need to serve some HTML and JS files to the browser that visits http://localhost:3000/ or otherwise it will not be able to connect.
I wrote some example code - both server-side and client-side - on how to use WebSocket to do exactly what you are trying to do here. It's available on GitHub and I originally wrote it for this answer: Differences between socket.io and websockets.
The relevant parts of the source code for your question here are:
WebSocket Server
WebSocket server example using Express.js:
var path = require('path');
var app = require('express')();
var ws = require('express-ws')(app);
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
console.error('express connection');
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, 'ws.html'));
});
app.ws('/', (s, req) => {
console.error('websocket connection');
for (var t = 0; t < 3; t++)
setTimeout(() => s.send('message from server', ()=>{}), 1000*t);
});
app.listen(3001, () => console.error('listening on http://localhost:3001/'));
console.error('websocket example');
Source: https://github.com/rsp/node-websocket-vs-socket.io/blob/master/ws.js
WebSocket Client
WebSocket client example using vanilla JavaScript:
var l = document.getElementById('l');
var log = function (m) {
var i = document.createElement('li');
i.innerText = new Date().toISOString()+' '+m;
l.appendChild(i);
}
log('opening websocket connection');
var s = new WebSocket('ws://'+window.location.host+'/');
s.addEventListener('error', function (m) { log("error"); });
s.addEventListener('open', function (m) { log("websocket connection open"); });
s.addEventListener('message', function (m) { log(m.data); });
Source: https://github.com/rsp/node-websocket-vs-socket.io/blob/master/ws.html
Instead of debugging a code that it not working, sometimes it's better to start from something that works and go from there. Take a look at how it all works and feel free to change it and use it in your projects - it's released under MIT license.