Test Socket.io backend in 10sec with Firecamp

Problem

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Testing and debugging of the Socket.IO real-time events is not as easy as today's REST. The only way to test it is by creating extra front-end with jQuery/HTML and use console.log there. Sometimes the hard-coded mocha test can work.

But this way is more complex, expensive in time, less manageable and indeed lower confident about the code quality and best practices.

Solution

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Firecamp, It's a GUI testing client for the SocketIO and WebSocket.

FC completely removes the frontend dependencies for testing and rapidly boost the development of real-time engineering (RTE) by saving extra time and efforts. Socket requests can be saved for the future purpose so again in future engineers can start debugging it in 5-10 seconds in case of an emergency.

SocketIO has mainly three elements

1. Connection URL - Connect to socket URL
2. Listener - Listen to events from the server
3. Emitter - Emit events to the server

We'll take an example of the real-time drawing app built by Ali Spittle.

1. Demo App: https://www.alispit.tel/websocket-drawing/
2. Back-end: https://github.com/aspittel/websocket-drawing-backend/blob/master/app.js
3. Front-end: https://github.com/aspittel/websocket-drawing/blob/master/src/App.js

From the backend server and demo app, we have the

1. Connection URL,
   • https://agile-taiga-80620.herokuapp.com
   • and path /socket.io
2. Listners
   • color_change
3. emitters
   • color_change
   • payload: { "color": "#e0e0e0", "id": 71 }

This video will show the main three steps for debugging the socket events. Connect, Listen and Emit, that simple.

Thank you Ali Spittel for the the real-time drawing app and the article.

Comments

[ssemugenyi isaac]

Hey Nishchit, today I downloaded Firecamp app, after failing to receive the message the backend emits on newMessage and hoped that it would help me troubleshoot the issue as well as test my socket listeners and emitter. But during the trial I was only able to connect to http endpoints but firecamp failed to establish a connection with my sockets and I can not figure out the issue as well I dont see any option on the app to reach out for assistance