Ratchet - PHP Websocket

This simple project aims to develop a simple chat application using PHP programming language that implement Ratchet Web socket. The chat will accept all incoming messages and deliver that message to all other connections.

Preparing application

You only need to do these once for all.

1. Make a folder for your application using command prompt:

   >> cd E:\xampp\htdocs
   >> E:\xampp\htdocs>mkdir PHP-Ratchet
   >> E:\xampp\htdocs>cd PHP-Ratchet
   >> E:\xampp\htdocs\PHP-Ratchet>
   

2. Install Ratchet using composer :

   >> E:\xampp\htdocs\PHP-Ratchet>composer require cboden/ratchet
   

3. We'll start off by creating a class, Chat class. This class will be our chat "application". This basic application will listen for 4 events:

   <ul>
   <li>onOpen - Called when a new client has Connected</li>
   <li>onMessage - Called when a message is received by a Connection</li>
   <li>onClose - Called when a Connection is closed</li>
   <li>onError - Called when an error occurs on a Connection</li>
   </ul>
   

Save this class as src/Chat.php. We're going to hold everything in the MyApp namespace. Our Chat class will be our application logic.

4. Add or Modify composer.json like this:

   {
        "autoload": {
            "psr-4": {
                "MyApp\\": "src"
            }
        },
        "require": {
            "cboden/ratchet": "^0.4"
        }
    }
   

5. Next, we're going to create script/file will call from the command line to launch our application:

   <?php
    use Ratchet\Server\IoServer;
    use Ratchet\Http\HttpServer;
    use Ratchet\WebSocket\WsServer;
    use MyApp\Chat;
   
    require dirname(__DIR__) . '/vendor/autoload.php';
    define("PORT", 8182);
   
    $server = IoServer::factory(
        new HttpServer(
            new WsServer(
                new Chat()
            )
        ),
        PORT
    );
   
    $server->run();
   

Above, you'll see we create an I/O (Input/Output) server class that listening for any incoming requests on port 8182. Save this script as src/chat-server.php.

6. Now, we're going to create chat interface and save this as src/index.php. You can use bootstrap for the page template (You can copy from my src/index.php):

   >> E:\xampp\htdocs\PHP-Ratchet>composer require twbs/bootstrap:4.0.0
   

7. Run composer update using this statement:

   >> E:\xampp\htdocs\PHP-Ratchet>composer update
   

8. Now, we can run the server with the following command in your terminal:

   >> E:\xampp\htdocs\_Project\PHP-Ratchet>cd src
   >> E:\xampp\htdocs\_Project\PHP-Ratchet\src>php chat-server.php
   

9. And run http://localhost/_Project/PHP-Ratchet/src/index.php on your browser to access chat interface.