Enterprise Web Development

Chapter 8. Upgrading HTTP to WebSocket

This chapter is about upgrading from HTTP to the more responsive HTML5 WebSocket. It begins with a brief overview of the existing legacy web networking, and then you’ll learn why and how to use WebSocket.

We’re going to show that the WebSocket protocol has literally no overhead compared to HTTP. You might consider using WebSocket to develop the following types of applications:

• Live trading/auctions/sports notifications
• Live collaborative writing
• Controlling medical equipment over the Web
• Chat applications
• Multiplayer online games
• Real-time updates in social streams

For the next version of the Save The Child application, we’re going to use WebSocket to implement an online auction communication layer. The goal is to let individuals and businesses purchase handmade arts and crafts made by children. All proceeds will go to Save The Child.

The goal is to let you see the advantages of changing the protocol for client-server communications on the Web. You’ll clearly see the advantages of WebSocket over regular HTTP by monitoring network traffic with such tools as Wireshark and Google Chrome Developer Tools.

All the server-side functionality supporting this chapter is written in Java, using the Java API for WebSocket reference implementation, which is a part of the Java EE 7 specification. We are using the latest release of the GlassFish application server. If you don’t know Java, just treat this server-side setup as a service that supports the WebSocket ...