WebSocket API

This repository is an experiment in using a WebSocket server to host an HTTP-like API for clients. The goal is to provide faster communication between client and server and allow easy handling of disconnect issues since we can track WebSocket connection live and provide real time status to the user. This is a very basic example that includes a signup and signin route to create and store user accounts, we automatically hash user passwords using Argon2 for greater security and handle authenticated requests with jwt (see notes below). You could easily extend this example to host more data and build out a full featured API.

Using the Server

1. Run cd Server && npm i to change to Server directory and install Server packages
2. Create .env file with the following parameters: MONGOOSE, JWT_SECRET where MONGOOSE is your MongoDB connection url and JWT_SECRET is your JWT secret (see Notes)
3. Run npm start to start the server
4. Connect to ws://localhost:8080 with your choice of WebSocket tools (see Notes)
5. Send Sign Up request via socket as JSON for example { "route": "signup", "username": "Cryptobyte", "password": "password" }
6. Send Sign In request via socket as JSON for example { "route": "signin", "username": "Cryptobyte", "password": "password" } and note the token field in response for next requests, this is your JWT for authention!
7. Send the example request to check if your JWT is valid, this is an example request to show how verifying authentication works, for example { "route": "get-data", "token": "YOUR_JWT" }

Using the Client

1. Run cd Server && npm i to change to Server directory and install Server packages
2. Create .env file with the following parameters: MONGOOSE, JWT_SECRET where MONGOOSE is your MongoDB connection url and JWT_SECRET is your JWT secret (see Notes)
3. Run npm start to start the server
4. In a new terminal run cd Client && npm i to install client packages
5. Run cd app && npm i to install React app packages
6. Change to the Client directory cd .. and run npm start
7. Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser

Notes

• You should not use this as configured, you should look at the WebSocket (ws) library page and setup the server to use HTTPS and look at the jwt library page and setup a private key instead of a shared token first!
• You can test the server with various WebSocket tools, I use and recommend websocat