engine.io-parser

What is engine.io-parser?

The engine.io-parser npm package is designed for encoding and decoding packets used by engine.io, which is a transport layer for real-time data exchange between a client and a server. It handles the framing of messages for transport over various real-time protocols and supports binary data.

What are engine.io-parser's main functionalities?

Encoding messages

This feature allows you to encode a message packet into a format suitable for transport over the network. The `encodePacket` function takes a packet object and a callback function that receives the encoded packet.

const { encodePacket } = require('engine.io-parser');
const packet = { type: 'message', data: 'hello' };
encodePacket(packet, false, (encodedPacket) => {
  // handle the encoded packet
});

Decoding messages

This feature allows you to decode a message packet that was received from the network. The `decodePacket` function takes an encoded packet and the type of data ('string' or 'binary') and returns the decoded packet object.

const { decodePacket } = require('engine.io-parser');
const encodedPacket = '2hello'; // example of an encoded message packet
const packet = decodePacket(encodedPacket, 'string');
// handle the decoded packet

Support for binary data

This feature provides support for encoding and decoding binary data. The `encodePacket` and `decodePacket` functions can handle binary data when the second argument is set to `true` for binary.

const { encodePacket, decodePacket } = require('engine.io-parser');
const binaryData = new ArrayBuffer(100);
const packet = { type: 'message', data: binaryData };
encodePacket(packet, true, (encodedPacket) => {
  // handle the encoded packet with binary data
});
const decodedPacket = decodePacket(encodedPacket, 'binary');
// handle the decoded packet with binary data

Other packages similar to engine.io-parser

ws

The 'ws' package provides a WebSocket client and server implementation. It allows for real-time communication similar to engine.io-parser but is focused on the WebSocket protocol specifically, whereas engine.io-parser is part of the engine.io ecosystem which can fall back to other transport mechanisms if WebSockets are not available.

socket.io-parser

The 'socket.io-parser' is used by Socket.IO to encode and decode messages. It is similar to engine.io-parser but is tailored for the Socket.IO framework, which builds on top of engine.io to provide additional features like rooms, namespaces, and middleware support.

json-socket

The 'json-socket' package is a wrapper around the Node.js net library that adds a layer for seamless JSON message sending. It is similar to engine.io-parser in that it handles message framing, but it is specifically designed for TCP sockets and does not support the variety of transport layers that engine.io-parser does.

README

engine.io-parser