spacebro-client

Spacebro client

Allow to automagically 🌟 connect to a Spacebro server

Installation

npm i -S spacebro-client

Basic Usage

First, you need to start a spaceBro server. To run one locally, run the following line in your terminal (mind that you need to have spaceBro installed):

spacebro

Then, it's time to write some code:

const spacebroClient = require('spacebro-client')

spacebroClient.connect('localhost', 8888, {
  computer: 'foo',
  channel: 'bar'
})

spacebroClient.on('pong', function () { console.log('pong') })
spacebroClient.emit('ping')

Basic API

spacebroClient.connect(address, port, options) or spacebroClient.connect(options)

Allows you to connect to a spaceBro server. Options is hash table of settings that will be used to define your client. If you choose not to pass an address (string) and a port (integer), spaceBro will try to connect to a server using MDNS.

Available options are :

• clientName (strongly advised) : The name of your app that will be used to receive and send events.
• channelName (strongly advised) : The common channel your apps will share. This will allow your to have multiple apps using the same server without worring about conflicts.
• zeroconfName (optional) : String that is the name of the service that will be looked for if no address is given.
• packers (optional) : Array of packers (see Hooks below), defined as hash object with the properties handler (required), eventName (all if null), priority (0 if null).
• unpackers (optional) : Array of unpackers (see Hooks below), defined as hash object with the properties handler (required), eventName (all if null), priority (0 if null).
• verbose (optional) : Boolean, if set to false, spaceBro will not show any log.
• sendBack (optional) : Boolean, if set to false, you will not receive the event you broadcast.

spacebroClient.emit(eventName, data)

Broadcast a specific event to all the apps in the channel. data must be an object.

spacebroClient.sendTo(eventName, target, data)

Send an event to a specific target in the channel. data must be an object.

spacebroClient.on(eventName, handler)

Listen to a specific event.

spacebroClient.once(eventName, handler)

Listen to a specific event, the listener only once.

Hooks

Packers

Before you send an event to the server, all packers associated with that event and all global packers (with no associated event) are called and applied to that event. They receive a single argument which is an object with two properties, the eventName and the data, and can return a new version of those data. If nothing is returned, the message will remain unchanged.

Unpackers

Unpackers are call when you receive a message from the server, before any handler is called. You can use to alter data (same as packers) but also to check the message as if an unpacker returns false, the message will not be sent to the handlers, it will also break the unpacking chain.

Contribute

Please follow standard style conventions.

You can modify the source in src/index.js. Run npm run build to transpile and test.

Enjoy !