title: Client-side socket.io without a node.js server
body: <p>To use socket.io on the client side, usually we start a node.js server and go like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;script src="/socket.io/socket.io.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>or with specific port:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;script src="http://localhost:3700/socket.io/socket.io.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <h3>Question is:</h3>
  
  <p>is it necessary to use node.js server to serve socket.io.js ?</p>
  
  <h3>...or is it possible to</h3>
  
  <p>make a local copy of socket.io.js instead of goes to server every single time we need socket.io?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>like, we go to view source and copy everything we got from the source of script tag,</p>
  
  <p>paste and save it as <strong>socket.io-local.js</strong> so that next time we use:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;script src="socket.io-local.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>will that work ?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <h2>Updates</h2>
  
  <p>Thanks for everyone's great response,</p>
  
  <p>I'm asking this because in the case I'm involved, I don't actually have access to the server: </p>
  
  <p>I am writing the client-side to connect to other developer's Socket Sever which is written in Java.</p>
  
  <p>Therefore I'll have to think a way to work around the fact that I don't have a server there for me.</p>
  
  <p>from what I've been testing, 
  this way seems to work but I really don't know what's happening behind the scene.</p>