Laravel Socket

This package allows you to use sockets easily and elegantly in your Laravel 5 application. Based on the awesome PHP socket library, Ratchet. Read the instructions below to get setup.

Requirements

Laravel 5.x.

Installation

You can install the package using the Composer package manager. You can install it by running this command in your project root:

composer require codemash/laravel-socket

Add the Codemash\Socket\SocketServiceProvider provider to the providers array in config/app.php':

'providers' => [
    ...
    Codemash\Socket\SocketServiceProvider::class,
],

Then, add the facade to your aliases array. The default facade provides an easy-to-use interface to integrate the socket files in your view.

'aliases' => [
    ...
    'Socket' => Codemash\Socket\Facades\Socket::class,
]

Finally, the config and the javascript files need to be published, which can be done by running the following command:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Codemash\Socket\SocketServiceProvider"

The published assets can be found at config/socket.php and the default javascript at public/vendor/socket/socket.js. It is important to know that the Socket::javascript() facade function will include both a default socket located at window.appSocket and the socket.js source file located in the vendor folder. These are merely a start, and provide a quick way to work with the sockets but you are always free to write a custom implementation.

Getting started

Let's create a simple application that sends a message to all other connected clients. When a socket action occurs, it will be wrapped around a Laravel event and triggered. This is a great way for us to catch these events and act upon them. Let's register our listener in the app/Providers/EventServiceProvider.php file like this:

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Contracts\Events\Dispatcher as DispatcherContract;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Support\Providers\EventServiceProvider as ServiceProvider;

class EventServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
   ...

    /**
    * The subscriber classes to register.
    *
    * @var array
    */
    protected $subscribe = [
        'App\Listeners\MessageEventListener'
    ];
}

And create the listener at the following path: app/Listeners/MessageEventListener.php. Listeners provide 3 basic events. For our example here, we'll only be using the onMessageReceived event.

<?php

namespace App\Listeners;

use Codemash\Socket\Events\MessageReceived;
use Codemash\Socket\Events\ClientConnected;
use Codemash\Socket\Events\ClientDisconnected;

class MessageEventListener {

    public function onMessageReceived(MessageReceived $event)
    {
        $message = $event->message;

        // If the incomming command is 'sendMessageToOthers', forward the message to the others.
        if ($message->command === 'sendMessageToOthers') {
            // To get the client sending this message, use the $event->from property.
            // To get a list of all connected clients, use the $event->clients pointer.
            $others = $event->allOtherClients();
            foreach ($others as $client) {
                // The $message->data property holds the actual message
                $client->send('newMessage', $message->data);
            }
        }
    }

    public function onConnected(ClientConnected $event)
    {
        // Not used in this example.
    }

    public function onDisconnected(ClientDisconnected $event)
    {
        // Not used in this example.
    }

    /**
     * Register the listeners for the subscriber.
     *
     * @param  Illuminate\Events\Dispatcher  $events
     */
    public function subscribe($events)
    {
        $events->listen(
            'Codemash\Socket\Events\ClientConnected',
            'App\Listeners\MessageEventListener@onConnected'
        );

        $events->listen(
            'Codemash\Socket\Events\MessageReceived',
            'App\Listeners\MessageEventListener@onMessageReceived'
        );

        $events->listen(
            'Codemash\Socket\Events\ClientDisconnected',
            'App\Listeners\MessageEventListener@onDisconnected'
        );

    }
}

What the application above does, is the following: a connected client sends a message with the sendMessageToOthers command, which basically forwards the message to the rest of the connected clients on your application. It is important to note that a client is not the same as a User model. A client is simply a connection from someones browser to your Laravel application, no matter if that user is authed or not. There is a possibility to fetch the connected authentication model, more on that later.

Now it's time to write the client side, luckily the Socket facade takes care of that in no time. Create a blade template with the following content:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8">
    </head>
    <body>
        <button onclick="sendMessage()">Send message</button>
        {!! Socket::javascript() !!}
        <script>
            var socket = window.appSocket;

            function sendMessage() {
                var text = window.prompt('Which message would you like to send?');
                socket.send('sendMessageToOthers', text);
            }

            socket.on('newMessage', function (newMessage) {
                alert('New message: ' + newMessage);
            });

            socket.connect(function () {
                // The socket is connected.
            });
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

Finally, let's run the socket listener. You can do this by running the following artisan command in the project root:

php artisan socket:listen

Client connections

Using Eloquent models

Laravel Socket reads the session when available and maps the User eloquent model to your client. You can then retrieve the Eloquent model by using the following code:

foreach ($clients as $client) {
    if ($client->authed()) {
        $user = $client->getUser();
        // $user now holds the App\User model,
        // or the model set in the 'config.auth.providers.users.model' config variable.
    }
}

Whenever you're using the clients list, like $event->clients, this is a Laravel Collection object. Methods such as filter, map, and so on, work very well on it.

Storing client related data

Client objects implement magic methods, meaning you can set any kind of additional properties during the life cycle of the server running. If you access a non existant property, it will however trigger an exception. Imagine you'd like to set a connected_at property containing the timestamp when the client connected. We'll add this property to the onConnected method in our event listener as seen below:

public function onConnected(ClientConnected $event)
{
    $event->client->connected_at = Carbon::now();
}

public function onMessageReceived(MessageReceived $event)
{
    if ($event->message->command === 'whenDidIConnect') {
        if (isset($event->from->connected_at)) {
            $event->from->send('iConnectedAt', $event->from->connected_at->toString());
        }
    }
}

Production

Ubuntu provides the neat nohup tool, which runs processes on the background. In case you'd like to run your socket on a production server and you're on Ubuntu, you may always use the nohup tool to run the socket listener.

nohup php artisan socket:listen &

When using the jobs command, you'll see the socket running. It's easy to kill the process using the kill <pid> command. The process ID is listed in the jobs list.

Contributing

If you're having problems, spot a bug, or have a feature suggestion, please log and issue on Github. If you'd like to have a crack yourself, fork the package and make a pull request. Any improvements are more than welcome.