Provided by: tcllib_1.21+dfsg-1_all bug

NAME

       websocket - Tcl implementation of the websocket protocol

SYNOPSIS

       package require Tcl  8.4

       package require http  2.7

       package require logger

       package require sha1

       package require base64

       package require websocket  ?1.4.2?

       ::websocket::open url handler ?options?

       ::websocket::send sock type ?msg? ?final?

       ::websocket::server sock

       ::websocket::live sock path cb ?proto?

       ::websocket::test srvSock cliSock path ?hdrs? ?qry?

       ::websocket::upgrade sock

       ::websocket::takeover sock handler ?server?

       ::websocket::conninfo sock what

       ::websocket::find ?host? ?port?

       ::websocket::configure sock args

       ::websocket::loglevel ?loglvl?

       ::websocket::close sock ?code? ?reason?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

DESCRIPTION

       NOTE: THIS DOCUMENTATION IS WORK IN PROGRESS...

       The websocket library is a pure Tcl implementation of the WebSocket specification covering
       the needs of both clients and servers.  Websockets provide a way to upgrade a regular HTTP
       connection  into  a  long-lived  and  continuous  binary or text communication between the
       client and the server.  The library offers a high-level interface to receive and send data
       as  specified  in  RFC  6455 (v. 13 of the protocol), relieving callers from all necessary
       protocol framing and reassembly.   It  implements  the  ping  facility  specified  by  the
       standard,  together  with  levers  to  control it.  Pings are server-driven and ensure the
       liveness of the connection across home (NAT)  networks.   The  library  has  a  number  of
       introspection facilities to inquire about the current state of the connection, but also to
       receive notifications of incoming pings, if necessary.  Finally, the  library  contains  a
       number  of  helper  procedures  to  facilitate  the  upgrading handshaking in existing web
       servers.

       Central to the library is the procedure websocket::takeover that will take over a  regular
       socket  and  treat  it  as  a  WebSocket,  thus performing all necessary protocol framing,
       packetisation and reassembly in servers and clients.  The procedure also takes a  handler,
       a  command  that  will  be  called back each time a (possibly reassembled) packet from the
       remote end is ready for delivery at the original caller.  While exported by  the  package,
       the  command  websocket::takeover  is  seldom  called  in  applications, since the package
       provides other commands that are specifically tuned for the needs of clients and servers.

       Typically, clients will open a connection to a remote server by providing a WebSocket  URL
       (ws:  or wss: schemes) and the handler described above to the command websocket::open. The
       opening procedure is a wrapper around the latest http::geturl implementations: it arranges
       to  keep  the  socket created within the http library opened for reuse, but confiscates it
       from its (internal) map of known sockets for its own use.

       Servers will start by registering themselves through the command ::websocket::server and a
       number  of handlers for paths using the command ::websocket::live.  Then for each incoming
       client connection, they should test the incoming request to detect if  it  is  an  upgrade
       request  using  ::websocket::test  and  perform  the  final  handshake to place the socket
       connection under the control of the websocket library  and  its  central  procedure  using
       ::websocket::upgrade.

       Apart   from  these  main  commands,  the  package  provides  a  number  of  commands  for
       introspection and basic operations on the websockets that it has under  its  control.   As
       WebSockets  connections are long-lived, most remaining communication with the library will
       be by way of callbacks, i.e. commands that are triggered whenever important events  within
       the library have occur, but mostly whenever data has been received on a WebSocket.

CALLBACKS

       A  number  of  commands  of  the  library take a handler handler command as an argument, a
       command which will be called back upon reception of data, but also upon  important  events
       within  the library or events resulting from control messages sent by the remote end.  For
       each callback being performed, the following arguments will be appended:

       sock   The identifier of the WebSocket, as returned for example by ::websocket::open

       type   A textual type describing the event or message content, can be one of the following

              text   Complete text message

              binary Complete binary message

              ping   Incoming ping message

              connect
                     Notification of successful connection to server

              disconnect
                     Disconnection from remote end

              close  Pending closure of connection

       msg    Will contain the data of the message, whenever this is relevant, i.e. when the type
              is text, binary or ping and whenever there is data available.

API

       ::websocket::open url handler ?options?
              This  command  is used in clients to open a WebSocket to a remote websocket-enabled
              HTTP server.  The URL provided as an argument in url should start with ws: or wss:,
              which  are the WebSockets counterpart of http: and https:. The handler is a command
              that will be called back on data  reception  or  whenever  important  events  occur
              during  the  life  of  the websocket.  ::websocket::open will return a socket which
              serves as both the identifier of the websocket and of the physical low-level socket
              to  the  server.   This  socket  can  be  used  in  a  number of other commands for
              introspection or for controlling the behaviour of the library.  Being essentially a
              wrapper  around  the  ::http::geturl command, this command provides mostly the same
              set of dash-led options than ::http::geturl.  Documented below are the options that
              differ from ::http::geturl and which are specific to the WebSocket library.

              -headers
                     This  option  is  supported,  knowing  that  a  number  of  headers  will be
                     automatically added internally in  the  library  in  order  to  be  able  to
                     handshake  the  upgrading  of  the  socket  from  a regular HTTP socket to a
                     WebSocket with the server.

              -validate
                     This option is not supported as it has no real point for WebSockets.

              -handler
                     This option is used internally by the websocket library and cannot be used.

              -command
                     This option is used internally by the websocket library and cannot be used.

              -protocol
                     This option specifies a list of application protocols to handshake with  the
                     server.   This  protocols  might  help  the  server  triggering  application
                     specific features.

              -timeout
                     This option is supported, but will implemented as part  of  the  library  to
                     enable a number of finalising cleanups.

       ::websocket::send sock type ?msg? ?final?
              This  command  will  send  a fragment or a control message to the remote end of the
              WebSocket identified by sock.  The type of the message specified in type can either
              be  an integer according to the specification or (preferrably) one of the following
              case insensitive strings: "text", "binary" or "ping".  The content of  the  message
              to  send  to  the  remote end is contained in msg and message fragmentation is made
              possible by the setting the argument final to non-true, knowing that  the  type  of
              each  fragment  has  then  to be the same.  The command returns the number of bytes
              that were effectively sent, or -1 on errors.  Serious errors,  such  as  when  sock
              does  not  identify a known WebSocket or when the connection is not stable yet will
              generate errors that must be catched.

       ::websocket::server sock
              This command registers the (accept) socket sock as the identifier fo an HTTP server
              that  is capable of doing WebSockets.  Paths onto which this server will listen for
              incoming connections should be declared using ::websocket::live.

       ::websocket::live sock path cb ?proto?
              This procedure registers callbacks that will be performed on a WebSocket  compliant
              server registered with ::websocket::server whenever a client connects to a matching
              path and protocol.  sock is the listening socket of the websocket compliant  server
              declared  using  ::websocket::server.  path is a glob-style path to match in client
              request, whenever this will occur.  cb is the command to callback (see  Callbacks).
              proto is a glob-style protocol name matcher.

       ::websocket::test srvSock cliSock path ?hdrs? ?qry?
              This  procedure  will  test  if  the  connection  from an incoming client on socket
              cliSock and on the path path is the opening of a WebSocket stream  within  a  known
              server  srvSock.   The  incoming  request  is  not  upgraded  at  once,  instead  a
              (temporary) context for the incoming connection is  created.   This  allows  server
              code  to  perform  a  number  of actions, if necessary, before the WebSocket stream
              connection goes live.  The text is made by analysing the  content  of  the  headers
              hdrs  which  should  contain  a dictionary list of the HTTP headers of the incoming
              client connection.  The command will return 1 if  this  is  an  incoming  WebSocket
              upgrade request and 0 otherwise.

       ::websocket::upgrade sock
              Upgrade the socket sock that had been deemed by ::websocket::test to be a WebSocket
              connection request to a true WebSocket as recognised by this library. As a  result,
              the necessary connection handshake will be sent to the client, and the command will
              arrange for relevant callbacks to be made during the life of the WebSocket, notably
              using the specifications described by ::websocket::live.

       ::websocket::takeover sock handler ?server?
              Take  over  the  existing  opened  socket  sock  to implement sending and receiving
              WebSocket framing on top of the socket.  The procedure arranges for handler  to  be
              called  back whenever messages, control messages or other important internal events
              are received or occured.  server defaults to 0 and can be set to 1  (or  a  boolean
              that evaluates to true) to specify that this is a WebSocket within a server.  Apart
              from specificities in the protocol, servers should ping their  clients  at  regular
              intervals  in  order to keep the connection opened at all time.  When server is set
              to true, the library will arrange to send these pings automatically.

       ::websocket::conninfo sock what
              Provides callers with some introspection facilities in  order  to  get  some  semi-
              internal information about an existing websocket connection. Depending on the value
              of the what argument, the procedure returns the following piece of information:

              peername
                     Name (preferred) or IP of remote end.

              sockname
                     or name Name or IP of local end.

              closed 1 if the connection is closed, 0 otherwise

              client 1 if the connection is a client websocket, 0 otherwise

              server 1 if the connection is a server websocket, 0 otherwise

              type   server if the connection is a server websocket, client otherwise.

              handler
                     The handler command associated to the websocket

              state  The state of the websocket, which can be one of:

                     CONNECTING
                            Connection to remote end is in progress.

                     CONNECTED
                            Connection is connected to remote end.

                     CLOSED Connection is closed.

       ::websocket::find ?host? ?port?
              Look among existing websocket connections for the ones that match the hostname  and
              port  number  filters  passed as parameters.  This lookup takes the remote end into
              account and the host argument  is  matched  both  against  the  hostname  (whenever
              available)  and the IP address of the remote end.  Both the host and port arguments
              are glob-style string matching filters and default to *, i.e. will match  any  host
              and/or port number.

       ::websocket::configure sock args
              This command takes a number of dash-led options (and their values) to configure the
              behaviour of an existing websocket connection.   The  recognised  options  are  the
              following (they can be shortened to the lowest common denominator):

              -keepalive
                     is  the  number of seconds between each keepalive pings being sent along the
                     connection.  A zero  or  negative  number  will  effectively  turn  off  the
                     feature.   In servers, -keepalive defaults to 30 seconds, and in clients, no
                     pings are initiated.

              -ping  is the text that is used during the automated pings.  This text defaults  to
                     the empty string, leading to an empty ping.

       ::websocket::loglevel ?loglvl?
              Set  or  query  the  log level of the library, which defaults to error.  Logging is
              built on top of the logger module, and the  library  makes  use  of  the  following
              levels:  debug,  info,  notice, warn and error.  When called with no argument, this
              procedure will simply return  the  current  log  level.   Otherwise  loglvl  should
              contain the desired log level.

       ::websocket::close sock ?code? ?reason?
              Gracefully   close   a   websocket  that  was  directly  or  indirectly  passed  to
              ::websocket::takeover.  The procedure will optionally send the code and  describing
              reason  as  part  of  the  closure  handshake.  Good defaults are provided, so that
              reasons for a number of  known  codes  will  be  sent  back.  Only  the  first  125
              characters  of  a reason string will be kept and sent as part of the handshake. The
              known codes are:

              1000   Normal closure (the default code when none provided).

              1001   Endpoint going away

              1002   Protocol Error

              1003   Received incompatible data type

              1006   Abnormal closure

              1007   Received data not consistent with type

              1008   Policy violation

              1009   Received message too big

              1010   Missing extension

              1011   Unexpected condition

              1015   TLS handshake error

EXAMPLES

       The following example opens a websocket connection to the echo  service,  waits  400ms  to
       ensure  that the connection is really established and sends a single textual message which
       should be echoed back by the echo service.  A real example would probably use the  connect
       callback  to  know  when connection to the remote server has been establish and would only
       send data at that time.

              package require websocket
              ::websocket::loglevel debug

              proc handler { sock type msg } {
                  switch -glob -nocase -- $type {
                co* {
                    puts "Connected on $sock"
                }
                te* {
                    puts "RECEIVED: $msg"
                }
                cl* -
                dis* {
                }
                  }

              }

              proc test { sock } {
                  puts "[::websocket::conninfo $sock type] from [::websocket::conninfo $sock sockname] to [::websocket::conninfo $sock peername]"

                  ::websocket::send $sock text "Testing, testing..."
              }

              set sock [::websocket::open ws://echo.websocket.org/ handler]
              after 400 test $sock
              vwait forever

TLS SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

       This package uses the TLS package to handle the security for https urls and  other  socket
       connections.

       Policy  decisions like the set of protocols to support and what ciphers to use are not the
       responsibility of TLS, nor of  this  package  itself  however.   Such  decisions  are  the
       responsibility of whichever application is using the package, and are likely influenced by
       the set of servers the application will talk to as well.

       For      example,      in      light      of      the      recent      POODLE       attack
       [http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/this-poodle-bites-exploiting-
       ssl-30.html] discovered by  Google  many  servers  will  disable  support  for  the  SSLv3
       protocol.   To handle this change the applications using TLS must be patched, and not this
       package, nor TLS itself.  Such a patch may be  as  simple  as  generally  activating  tls1
       support, as shown in the example below.

                  package require tls
                  tls::init -tls1 1 ;# forcibly activate support for the TLS1 protocol

                  ... your own application code ...

BUGS, IDEAS, FEEDBACK

       This  document,  and  the  package  it  describes, will undoubtedly contain bugs and other
       problems.   Please  report  such  in  the  category  websocket  of  the  Tcllib   Trackers
       [http://core.tcl.tk/tcllib/reportlist].  Please also report any ideas for enhancements you
       may have for either package and/or documentation.

       When proposing code changes, please provide unified diffs, i.e the output of diff -u.

       Note further that attachments are strongly preferred over inlined patches. Attachments can
       be  made  by going to the Edit form of the ticket immediately after its creation, and then
       using the left-most button in the secondary navigation bar.

SEE ALSO

       http

KEYWORDS

       http, internet, net, rfc 6455

CATEGORY

       Networking