You might not need WebSockets

1. tinysse

   1 10 69 8.2 Rust

   A programmable server for Server-Sent Events (SSE).

   

   I pretty much always prefer SSE over websockets just because of the simplicity end-to-end. It's "just HTTP", so all the HTTP-based tech and tools apply out-of-the-box without any really special configuration that is required for WS. Curl (or even netcat) "just works", no special client. I don't have to do any special CDN configuration to proxy connections or terminate SSL aside from just turning off buffering.

   Websockets requires almost a completely new L7 stack and tons of special configuration to handle Upgrade, text or data frames, etc. And once you're out of "HTTP mode" you now have to implement the primitive mechanics of basically everything yourself, like auth, redirects, sessions, etc.

   It's why I originally made Tiny SSE which is a purpose-built SSE server written in Rust and programmable with Lua.

   https://tinysse.com

   https://github.com/benwilber/tinysse

2. SurveyJS

   surveyjs.io featured

   JavaScript Form Builder with No-Code UI & Built-In JSON Schema Editor. Keep full control over the data you collect and tailor the form builder’s entire look and feel to your users’ needs. SurveyJS works with React, Angular, Vue 3, and is compatible with any backend or auth system. Learn more.

   

3. eventkit

   2 2 204 9.7 TypeScript

   Declarative streams for Typescript

   

   I have a demo of this for CF workers https://github.com/hntrl/eventkit/tree/main/examples/workers...

   (it's not SSE in particular, but it demonstrates that you can have a long running stream like SSE)

4. SocketCluster

   3 13 6,188 5.9 JavaScript

   Highly scalable realtime pub/sub and RPC framework

   

   The problem with HTTP2 is that the server-push aspect was tacked on top of an existing protocol as an afterthought. Also, because HTTP is a resource transfer protocol, it adds a whole bunch of overheads like request and response headings which aren't always necessary but add to processing time. The primary purpose of HTTP2 was to allow servers to preemptively push files/resources to clients to avoid round-trip latency; to reduce the reliance on script bundles.

   WebSockets is a simpler protocol built from the ground up for bidirectional communication. It provides a lot more control over the flow of data as everything passes over a single connection which has a single lifecycle. It makes it a lot easier to manage state and to recover cleanly from a lost connection when you only have one logical connection. It makes it easier to process messages in a specific order and to do serial processing of messages.

   I considered the possibility of switching the transport to HTTP2 for https://socketcluster.io/ years ago, but it's a fundamentally more complex protocol which adds unnecessary overheads and introduces new security challenges so it wasn't worth it.

5. braid-spec

   4 16 250 7.4

   Working area for Braid extensions to HTTP

   

   People interested in HTTP streaming should check out Braid-HTTP: https://braid.org. It adds a standard set of semantics that elegantly extend HTTP with event streaming into a robust state synchronization protocol.

6. mockaton

   5 7 15 9.7 JavaScript

   HTTP Mock Sever

   

7. WHATWG HTML Standard

   6 171 8,627 9.4 HTML

   HTML Standard

   

   Native EventSource doesn’t let you set headers ([issue](https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/2177)), so it’s harder to handle authentication.

8. litestream

   7 182 12,295 3.3 Go

   Streaming replication for SQLite.

   

9. Stream

   getstream.io featured

   Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video. Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.

   

10. webtransport

    8 13 899 8.5 Bikeshed

    WebTransport is a web API for flexible data transport

    

    > No.

    Thanks for your insight.

    It seems you need to urgently reach out to the people working on WebTransport. You seem to know better and their documentation contradicts and refutes your assertion.

    https://github.com/w3c/webtransport/blob/main/explainer.md

11. sockette

    9 2 2,468 4.2 JavaScript

    The cutest little WebSocket wrapper! 🧦

    

    https://github.com/lukeed/sockette

    I did my own which provides rpc functionality and type safety:

12. smolrpc

    10 1 2 6.2 JavaScript

    

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