What are the basic requirements for using WebSockets serverside?

Question

I'm trying to learn about WebSocket as I see many possibilities with it and would like to explore it, but I am having a hard time understanding the basic requirements for it.

There exist a ton of blogs out there praising WebSocket like was it God and they explain how to develop WebSocket applications brilliantly.

However I don't understand when they all shortly mention that you need a WebSocket compatible server and then none of them tells you how to set it up and what you need to do to make it work properly when you call it through your client side scripts etc. - Even WebSocket.org fails to explain it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Say I have an ASP.NET website and would like to use WebSocket to push notifications, maybe even have a chatroom. What would I need to do to make my Javascript-based chatroom application working?

Answer 1

If you are using ASP.NET, you will need IIS8 to work with WebSockets integrated in the app (so you would need Windows 8 or Windows 2012). Or, you can have a WebSocket server in another port/server.

If your "push" requirements are not very exigent, you can try SignalR: http://www.asp.net/signalr. Check out their tutorials to get started. But again, you won't be able of using WebSockets unless you are using IIS8.

Other WebSocket frameworks are XSocket.NET and SuperWebSocket. Or if you want you can take a look at my WebSocketListener that I am developing, that is just a lightweight WebSocket connector and nothing more, although it is under heavy development at the moment.

From client side, the WebSocket API is the same for all browsers.