Alternative to Ratchet for WebSocket?

[jdeepwell]

Hi all,

I have implemented a WebSocket server using ReactPHP/Ratchet. To be honest I am loosing a little faith in the development of Ratchet and the fact that it uses so much deprecated stuff from PHP worries me. I therefore started looking for alternative WebSocket implementations that work nicely with ReactPHP – but by now to no avail :(

So I just wanted to reach out if anyone would have a pointer. Is there really no alternative to Ratchet? (I would really like to avoid having to switch to AMPHP....)

[WyriHaximus]

Have a look at https://github.com/voryx/WebSocketMiddleware it uses the Ratchet's websocket implementation under the hood.

[jdeepwell]

Hey @WyriHaximus , thx for the reply!
Yes, I stumbled upon this too. It's just that if it depends on Ratchet (it requires part of it in its composer.json) it's not really an alternative to it.
J.

[jdeepwell]

Unfortunately I stumbled upon a bug in WebSocketMiddleware – the WebSocketConnection does not issue close events when the underlying streams are closed/dropped. This can lead to memory leaks. I issued a pull request – waiting…

[mbonneau]

Hi @jdeepwell , I maintain WebSocketMiddleware and will take a look at the PR you just submitted. I am also a maintainer on Ratchet, but I mainly am responsible for RFC6455. Feel free to reach out if you think things are falling behind on either. I use both libraries. I have v0.4 of the RFC project pretty much ready to go here: ratchetphp/RFC6455#60 - was just waiting for someone out there to give it some form of thumbs up. I will merge soon and release if there is no feedback.

[jdeepwell]

Hi @mbonneau , thx for the speedy response! I tested the change in my project and got the events I need now when the connection drops. But I'm new to ReactPHP in general, so I'm keen to receive your feedback. (PS: I just switched to WebSocketMiddleware because of the deprecated pieces in Ratchet – other than that Ratchet worked great).

[jdeepwell]

Hey @mbonneau , any chance you could take a look at the PR? We have this change (just three lines) in production for a while now and it works nicely, but I'm worried to keep it in the project via composer-patches as we had issues with that. Thx!

[jdeepwell]

Thx @mbonneau for your time & the merge 🙏

[clue]

@jdeepwell I'm sure you're going to like I just posted an update on reviving Ratchet in ratchetphp/Ratchet#1054 (comment)! 🚀

If everything goes accordingly to plan you won't even be looking for an alternative to Ratchet, so make sure to support the project if you can! Cheers!

[jdeepwell]

Hey @clue thx for update. It's great news that Ratchet will be moving forward. I personally already have made the switch to voryx/WebSocketMiddleware and it does what I need, but it's always good to have potential alternatives! So best wishes and many thx for your great work!