quxo/sse

Server send events for racket

This repo has moved to https://gitlab.com/oquijano/sse

Server Sent Events Library for Racket

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This is an implementation of server sent events (SSE) for racket. An explanations of SSE's can be found in this MDN web doc.

I was not able to use servlets to implement it since they return a http response for each request. I did not find a way to use them to create a stream. So, I wrote the http server from scratch largely based on Systems Programming with Racket by Matthew Flatt.

Installation

In order to install this package clone the repository, enter the cloned folder and run the following command

raco pkg install

Example of use

The following code creates a page with a textarea that will be filled with the data field of events. The page can be accessed through the port 8080. The ECMAScript in the page connects to the port 8122 to get server sent events. Each time that an event is sent it is added to the textarea.

Save the following script in a file sse_test.rkt.

#lang racket                                                                        
                                                                                    
(require web-server/http/xexpr)                                                     
(require web-server/servlet-env)                                                    
                                                                                    
(require SSE)                                                                       
                                                                                    
;; Page that connects to the server-sent events                                     
(define (start-page req)                                                            
    (response/xexpr                                                                 
        `(html                                                                      
          (head                                                                     
          (meta ([http-equiv "content-type"] [content "text/html; charset=utf-8"] ))
          (meta ([name "viewport"] [content "width=device-width"] ))                
          (title "Events test"))                                                    
                                                                                    
          (body                                                                     
          (h1 "Welcome to the Events test")                                         
          (textarea ([readonly ""]))                                                
          (script                                                                   
          "                                                                         
          var evtSource = new EventSource(\"//localhost:8122\");                    
          var textArea = document.getElementsByTagName(\"textarea\")[0];            
                                                                                    
          evtSource.onmessage = function(e){                                        
              textArea.value =  e.data + \"\\n\" + textArea.value ;                 
              console.log(e.data);                                                  
          }                                                                         
          ")))))                                                                    
                                                                                    
(define a-sse (make-sse))                                                           
                                                                                    
(define (start-all)                                                                 
                                                                                    
  ; start the SSE listener                                                          
  (define sse-stop (start-sse-tcp-port 8122 a-sse))                                 
                                                                                    
  ; starts the page servlet                                                         
  (define page-thread  (thread                                                      
                        (lambda ()                                                  
                          (serve/servlet start-page                                 
                                         #:launch-browser? #f                       
                                         #:quit? #f                                 
                                         #:servlet-path "/"                         
                                         #:port 8080))))                            
                                                                                    
  ; return a function that stops the page servlet and the SSE listener              
  (lambda ()                                                                        
    (sse-stop)                                                                      
    (kill-thread page-thread))                                                      
  )                                                                                 
                                                                                    
                                                                                    
(define stop-all (start-all))                                                       

Now go to the same folder where you saved the file and run the racket REPL. Then write

,enter "sse_test.rkt"

This starts the page servlet and the SSE server. Now, open your browser and go to the url localhost:8080. You are going to see a welcome message and an empty textarea. In order to add some text send a data only event as follows:

(send-new-event a-sse #:data "Hello World!")

At this point the text "Hello World!" appears in the text area.

Now open a new tab or window of your browser and go again to localhost:8080. Note that the message "Hello World!" does not appear in this window. This is because we used #:id with value #f (it is the default value). Let us now send one with #:id equal to #t.

(send-new-event a-sse #:data "Hello World! (again)" #:id #t)

At this point the two windows that you have open will show the messahe "Hello World! (again)". This would be the case even with #:id equal to #f. What makes the difference is that if you open now a new tab and connect to localhost:8080, that window will also show this message.