ReconnectingWebSocket
A small JavaScript library that decorates the WebSocket API to provide a WebSocket connection that will automatically reconnect if the connection is dropped.
It is API compatible, so when you have:
ws = new WebSocket('ws://....');
you can replace with:
ws = new ReconnectingWebSocket('ws://....');
Minified library with gzip compression is less than 600 bytes.
How reconnections occur
With the standard WebSocket API, the events you receive from the WebSocket instance are typically:
onopen
onmessage
onmessage
onmessage
onclose // At this point the WebSocket instance is dead.
With a ReconnectingWebSocket, after an onclose event is called it will automatically attempt to reconnect. In addition, a connection is attempted repeatedly (with a small pause) until it succeeds. So the events you receive may look something more like:
onopen
onmessage
onmessage
onmessage
onclose
// ReconnectingWebSocket attempts to reconnect
onopen
onmessage
onmessage
onmessage
onclose
// ReconnectingWebSocket attempts to reconnect
onopen
onmessage
onmessage
onmessage
onclose
This is all handled automatically for you by the library.
More
Like this? Check out websocketd for the simplest way to create WebSocket backends from any programming language.
