ipc-link-core

IPC-Link Core

IPC-Link Core is a lower level version of IPC-Link that is lightning fast and operates with raw buffers as opposed to sending buffered stringified JSON objects. This library has no dependencies and uses built-in modules (net, events...) to operate.

In IPC-Link Core, you have "nodes", which can either create a server (and receive messages) or connect to other servers, even both at the same time. Additionally, you have Node#sendTo(socket, data); which will wait for the socket to reply back.

Usage

Check the examples here for working micro IPC-Link Core applications.

hello.js

// This example must be run before interactive/world, since this serves the
// IPC server the other sockets connect to.
const { Node } = require('ipc-link-core');

const node = new Node('hello')
	.on('connection', (name, socket) => {
		console.log(`Connected to ${name}`);
		node.sendTo(socket, 'Hello')
			.then(reply => console.log(`Hello ${reply}`));
	})
	.on('listening', console.log.bind(null, 'Listening'))
	.on('message', console.log.bind(null, 'Message'))
	.on('error', console.error.bind(null, 'Error'))
	.on('socketClose', console.log.bind(null, 'Closed Socket:'))
	.serve('hello', 8001);

world.js

// This example depends on hello.js to be running in another process.
// This Node is a socket that replies to hello.js with "world!" when it
// receives "Hello".
const { Node } = require('ipc-link-core');

const node = new Node('world')
	.on('message', (message) => {
		console.log(`Received data from ${message.from}:`, message);
		if (message.data === 'Hello')
			message.reply('world!');
	})
	.on('error', console.error)
	.on('connect', () => console.log('Connected!'));

node.connectTo('hello', 8001)
	.catch(() => console.log('Disconnected!'));

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The differences with IPC-Link are:

• IPC-Link Core does not rely on node-ipc, but rather uses net.Socket, net.Server and events.EventEmitter.
• IPC-Link Core does not use JSON objects: it uses buffers with headers.
• IPC-Link Core does not abstract net.Socket#connect nor net.Server#listen, as opposed to what node-ipc does.
• IPC-Link Core does not send a message to a socket if it's not connected, you must connect first (in node-ipc, it attempts to connect using the name, which breaks in many cases and leads to unexpected behaviour).