Lighttpd with webSocket

Question

I am trying to make a simple webapp which uses websocket for communication with the lighttpd server. Unfortunately my setup does not work and i do not know why. Search in the internet does not offer clear example how to use mod_wstunnel( May be someone has experience with lighttpd. Below you can find my sandbox:

lighttpd.conf

server.modules += ("mod_wstunnel", "mod_setenv")
server.indexfiles = ("index.html")
server.document-root = "/var/www/html/websocket"

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/websockify" {
    wstunnel.server = ( "" => ( ( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => "5900" ) ) )
    wstunnel.frame-type = "binary" 
    server.stream-request-body  = 2
    server.stream-response-body = 2
}

index.html

<h1>Real Time Messaging</h1>
<pre id="messages" style="height: 400px; overflow: scroll"></pre>
<input type="text" id="messageBox" placeholder="Type your message here" style="display: block; width: 100%; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 10px;" />
<button id="send" title="Send Message!" style="width: 100%; height: 30px;">Send Message</button>

<script>
  (function() {
    const sendBtn = document.querySelector('#send');
    const messages = document.querySelector('#messages');
    const messageBox = document.querySelector('#messageBox');

    let ws;

    function showMessage(message) {
      messages.textContent += `

${message}`;
      messages.scrollTop = messages.scrollHeight;
      messageBox.value = '';
    }

    function init() {
      if (ws) {
        ws.onerror = ws.onopen = ws.onclose = null;
        ws.close();
      }

      ws = new WebSocket("ws://127.0.0.1:5900/websockify")
      ws.onopen = () => {
        console.log('Connection opened!');
      }
      ws.onmessage = ({ data }) => showMessage(data);
      ws.onclose = function() {
        ws = null;
      }
    }

    sendBtn.onclick = function() {
      if (!ws) {
        showMessage("No WebSocket connection :(");
        return ;
      }

      ws.send(messageBox.value);
      showMessage(messageBox.value);
    }

    init();
  })();
</script>

Thanks in advance for the help.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65862891/lighttpd-with-websocket

Answer 1

lighttpd mod_wstunnel terminates the websocket tunnel in lighttpd, so that the client can, for example, send JSON over websockets to lighttpd, and lighttpd will decode and pass only the JSON to the backend.

If your server is its own websocket server and you want lighttpd to proxy the websocket connection to your websocket server, then see lighttpd mod_proxy or lighttpd mod_cgi and configure either of those modules to allow upgrade for Upgrade: websocket requests