Ratchet PHP server establishes connection, but Kotlin never receives acknowledgement - kotlin

Question

I have a ratchet server, that I try to access via Websocket. It is similar to the tutorial: logging when there is a new client or when it receives a message. The Ratchet server reports having successfully established a connection while the Kotlin client does not (the connection event in Kotlin is never fired). I am using the socket-io-java module v.2.0.1. The client shows a timeout after the specified timeout time, gets detached at the server and attaches again after a short while, just as it seems to think, the connection did not properly connect (because of a missing connection response?).
The successful connection confirmation gets reported to the client, if the client is a Websocket-Client in the JS-console of Chrome, but not to my Kotlin app. Even an Android emulator running on the same computer doesn´t get a response (So I think the problem is not wi-fi related).
The connection works fine with JS, completing the full handshake, but with an Android app it only reaches the server, but never the client again.
That´s my server code:
<?php
namespace agroSMS\Websockets;
use Ratchet\ConnectionInterface;
use Ratchet\MessageComponentInterface;
class SocketConnection implements MessageComponentInterface
{
protected \SplObjectStorage $clients;
public function __construct() {
$this->clients = new \SplObjectStorage;
}
function onOpen(ConnectionInterface $conn)
{
$this->clients->attach($conn);
error_log("New client attached");
}
function onClose(ConnectionInterface $conn)
{
$this->clients->detach($conn);
error_log("Client detached");
}
function onError(ConnectionInterface $conn, \Exception $e)
{
echo "An error has occurred: {$e->getMessage()}\n";
$conn->close();
}
function onMessage(ConnectionInterface $from, $msg)
{
error_log("Received message: $msg");
// TODO: Implement onMessage() method.
}
}
And the script that I run in the terminal:
<?php
use Ratchet\Server\IoServer;
use agroSMS\Websockets\SocketConnection;
use Ratchet\WebSocket\WsServer;
use Ratchet\Http\HttpServer;
require dirname(__DIR__) . '/vendor/autoload.php';
$server = IoServer::factory(
new HttpServer(
new WsServer(
new SocketConnection()
)
)
);
$server->run();
What I run in the browser for tests (returns "Connection established" in Chrome, but for some reason not in the Browser "Brave"):
var conn = new WebSocket('ws://<my-ip>:80');
conn.onopen = function(e) {
console.log("Connection established!");
};
conn.onmessage = function(e) {
console.log(e.data);
};
What my Kotlin-code looks like:
try {
val uri = URI.create("ws://<my-ip>:80")
val options = IO.Options.builder()
.setTimeout(60000)
.setTransports(arrayOf(WebSocket.NAME))
.build()
socket = IO.socket(uri, options)
socket.connect()
.on(Socket.EVENT_CONNECT) {
Log.d(TAG, "[INFO] Connection established")
socket.send(jsonObject)
}
.once(Socket.EVENT_CONNECT_ERROR) {
val itString = gson.toJson(it)
Log.d(TAG, itString)
}
}catch(e : Exception) {
Log.e(TAG, e.toString())
}
After a minute the Kotlin code logs a "timeout"-error, detaches from the server, and attaches again.
When I stop the script on the server, it then gives an error: "connection reset, websocket error" (which makes sense, but why doesn´t he get the connection in the first time?)
I also tried to "just" change the protocol to "wss" in the url, in case it might be the problem, even though my server doesn´t even work with SSL, but this just gave me another error:
[{"cause":{"bytesTransferred":0,"detailMessage":"Read timed out","stackTrace":[],"suppressedExceptions":[]},"detailMessage":"websocket error","stackTrace":[],"suppressedExceptions":[]}]
And the connection isn´t even established at the server. So this try has been more like a down-grade.

Answer 1

I went to the github page of socket.io-java-client to find a solution to my problem there and it turned out, the whole problem was, that I misunderstood a very important concept:
That socket.io uses Websockets doesn´t mean it is compatible with Websockets.
So speaking in clear words:
If you use socket.io at client side, you also need to use it at the server side and vice versa. Since socket.io sends a lot of meta data with its packets, a pure Websocket-server will accept their connection establishment, but his acknowledgement coming back will not be accepted by the socket.io client.
You have to go for either full socket.io or full pure Websockets.