title: Web Sockets server side implementation for NodeJS
body: <p>Part of this problem might be that there's too much discussion on the client side for me to see  wood for the trees.</p>
  <p>Anyway, here's what I want to do. I need a platform independent server-side implementation of WebSockets. I'd like it to run in NodeJS.</p>
  <p>Now, 99% of what I've found on this topic talks about socket.io. But so far as I can tell, that is not WebSockets, it's a special &quot;extra&quot; protocol in its own right. I need something that works &quot;by the (not-yet) standard&quot;. There's a good reason for that, and it's non-negotiable, trust me on that.</p>
  <p>So, I tried WebSocket, but that requires (or appears to require both python and, worse, Visual Studio) to run on Windows. I need something that is platform independent and doesn't need special things like this.</p>
  <p>I also tried node-websocket-server, but I can't get that to work at all. The example on the main page fails for me. It seems to accept a connection, but the client doesn't see it, neither side gets to send anything, and the client immediately sees the connection as closed. Indeed, all I ever get is a &quot;connection&quot; callback, and then it seems to die. Running in debug mode didn't tell me anything useful, except for some internal error about some object or other not having a flush() method. I half-suspect this is a defunct project?</p>
  <p>So, I'm out of ideas. Is it possible to persuade socket.io to work purely by the (non)spec for WebSockets? Is there a way to get node-websocket-server to behave that I've failed to find. Is there a way round the Visual Studio dependency in websocket, or is there some other NodeJS based tool that meets all my requirements?</p>
  <p>Oh, one other thing, I'd like the tool to coexist peacefully with &quot;connect&quot; as I'm using that for my regular document serving.</p>