comm.js: Send server requests via Websockets, AJAX or XDR

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Version License JavaScript version Categories
comm 11MIT/X Consortium ...1.0AJAX, jQuery
Description Author

This is a jQuery plugin to send server requests via Websockets, AJAX or XDR.

It takes an object key-value pairs and sends a request to a server choosing the appropriate method according to the capabilities of the Web browser.

It uses XDomainRequest objects if the browser is Internet Explorer, Web sockets, or uses WebSockets if the URL protocol is ws or wss, or AJAX requests otherwise.

The plugin can retry sending the requests later if it was not possible to send it before.

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Nowadays, there several ways to communicate with Web servers. Some ways are only available in certain versions of Web browsers.

This object provides a generic solution to send requests using either Websockets, AJAX requests or XDomainRequests.

Manuel Lemos
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Name: Jason Gerfen <contact>
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Country: United States United States
Age: 47
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Winner: 2x

Details

comm.js

Handles XHR, XDR, WS & WSS protocols

Fork me @ https://www.github.com/jas-/comm.js

Options

  • `async`: Force async opterational mode
  • `binary`: Force binary mode sends
  • `url`: If not specified the current page location is used
  • `headers`: A key/value object of headers to apply
  • `method`: The method to use (post, put, delete etc)
  • `data`: The data to be processed
  • `timeout`: Timeout value for retries
  • `interval`: Interval to use for retrying send upon connection termination

Examples

Here are a couple of examples

Default use

The default use case

comm(function(err, response){
	if (err) throw err;
	console.log(response);
});

A post example

An example sending a post request with a JSON object

  comm({
    method: 'post',
    data: {abc: '123', xyz: 345}
  }, function(err, res){
    if (err) throw err;
    console.log(res);
  });

Force ws/wss communications

Here is how you can use the websocket or secure web socket protocols

comm({
	data: 'ping test',
	url: 'ws://echo.websocket.org'
}, function(err, response){
	if (err) throw err;
	console.log(response);
});

Set customized headers

Need to use custom headers? See RFC-4229 for a complete list

comm({
	headers: {
		Content-Type: 'text/plain'
	}
}, function(err, response){
	if (err) throw err;
	console.log(response);
});

A note form submissions

To attach a form object as the payload the simpliest method would be the following example.

var formData = new FormData(document.getElementById('form-id'));
comm({
	data: formData
}, function(err, response){
	if (err) throw err;
	console.log(response);
});

A note on XDR

This is the least tested protocol this library supports. It will only be used when the clients browser is internet explorer, the version is less than 10 has access to the window.XDomainRequest object and if the URL specified does not match the current window.

A note on CORS

If you wish to use this for CORS requests which it does support you must configure your web server to allow the following header params (this example is tuned to support authentication credentials while limiting access vs. using a wildcard origin such as *)

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://example.com
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, OPTIONS
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Cache-Control, Content-Type
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
  Files folder image Files  
File Role Description
Accessible without login Plain text file bower.json Data Auxiliary data
Plain text file comm.js Class Class source
Plain text file comm.min.js Class Class source
Accessible without login Plain text file LICENSE Data Auxiliary data
Accessible without login Plain text file README.md Doc. Auxiliary data
Accessible without login Plain text file _config.yml Data Auxiliary data

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