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Native support for Socket.IO on Azure, scalability issue no more

kevinguo's avatar
kevinguo
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jan 03, 2024
This article talks about a popular open-source library called “Socket.IO”. It’s often used to build real-time web applications, like multi-player games and co-editing, co-creation applications.   ...
Updated Jan 03, 2024
Version 2.0
Azure Web PubSub
kevinguo's avatar
kevinguo
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jan 08, 2024

Hello Paul, 

 

Thank you for your comment. 

 

Like you mentioned, Socket.IO and SignalR do solve the same problem for developers - providing a real-time messaging channel between the clients and server and nice APIs for you to manage connections as a single unit. SignalR is the official way for .NET developers to do real-time app development, while Socket.IO is more popular with JS/Node developers.

 

On Azure there are two services for each.

  • Azure SignalR Service for SignalR library developers and
  • Azure Web PubSub for non-.NET developers

The support for Socket.IO library is offered through Azure Web PubSub. Beyond supporting Socket.IO library, Azure Web PubSub supports raw WebSockets. 

 

Your suggestion is quite interesting. It is something we've thought about before. Now here's a question back at ya. How would you approach it without alienating either group of existing users? For example, how would you name such a combined service?