Creating a WebSocket server

The WebSocket protocol enables two-way communication between a browser and a server. WebSockets are commonly leveraged for building real-time web applications, such as instant messaging clients.

In this recipe, we’re going to use the third-party ws module to create a WebSocket server that we can interact with via our browser.

Getting ready

First, we need to prepare our project directory with the necessary files for the recipe.

1. Start by creating a directory named websocket-server containing two files – one named client.js and another named server.js:

   $ mkdir websocket-server
   $ cd websocket-server
   $ touch client.js
   $ touch server.js

2. Also, for our client, let’s create a public directory containing a file named index.html:

   $ mkdir public
   $ touch public/index.html

3. As we will be using a third-party npm module, we also need to initialize our project:

   $ npm init --yes

How to do it…

In this recipe, we’...