How can I send and receive WebSocket messages on the server side?

Question

• How can I send and receive messages on the server side using WebSocket, as per the protocol?

• Why do I get seemingly random bytes at the server when

Answer 1

Implementation in Go

Encode part (server -> browser)

func encode (message string) (result []byte) {
  rawBytes := []byte(message)
  var idxData int

  length := byte(len(rawBytes))
  if len(rawBytes) <= 125 { //one byte to store data length
    result = make([]byte, len(rawBytes) + 2)
    result[1] = length
    idxData = 2
  } else if len(rawBytes) >= 126 && len(rawBytes) <= 65535 { //two bytes to store data length
    result = make([]byte, len(rawBytes) + 4)
    result[1] = 126 //extra storage needed
    result[2] = ( length >> 8 ) & 255
    result[3] = ( length      ) & 255
    idxData = 4
  } else {
    result = make([]byte, len(rawBytes) + 10)
    result[1] = 127
    result[2] = ( length >> 56 ) & 255
    result[3] = ( length >> 48 ) & 255
    result[4] = ( length >> 40 ) & 255
    result[5] = ( length >> 32 ) & 255
    result[6] = ( length >> 24 ) & 255
    result[7] = ( length >> 16 ) & 255
    result[8] = ( length >>  8 ) & 255
    result[9] = ( length       ) & 255
    idxData = 10
  }

  result[0] = 129 //only text is supported

  // put raw data at the correct index
  for i, b := range rawBytes {
    result[idxData + i] = b
  }
  return
}

Decode part (browser -> server)

func decode (rawBytes []byte) string {
  var idxMask int
  if rawBytes[1] == 126 {
    idxMask = 4
  } else if rawBytes[1] == 127 {
    idxMask = 10
  } else {
    idxMask = 2
  }

  masks := rawBytes[idxMask:idxMask + 4]
  data := rawBytes[idxMask + 4:len(rawBytes)]
  decoded := make([]byte, len(rawBytes) - idxMask + 4)

  for i, b := range data {
    decoded[i] = b ^ masks[i % 4]
  }
  return string(decoded)
}