I decided to make a janky chat site type thing to get me started working with requests and such.
My approach was to create an express.js server that takes in requests when the '/messageReciever' is posted to.
app.post("/messageReciever", (req, res) => {
logMessage(req.body.message);
});
The next step was to make a 'client' that could send information to this end point:
var XMLHttpRequest = require("XMLHttpRequest").XMLHttpRequest;
function makePostRequest(url, json)
{
let http = new XMLHttpRequest();
http.open("POST", url, true);
http.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");
http.send(JSON.stringify(json));
}
function sendMessage(url, message)
{
makePostRequest(url, {message: message});
logMessage(message);
}
Both of these are fine. The issue I'm running into is, once I receive the post request I want to refresh the main page of my site (to show the messages)
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.render('index', data = retrieveMessages());
});
I've tried basically everything I've found online:
res.redirect('back');
res.redirect(req.get('referer'));
res.redirect(req.originalUrl)
I used res.redirect('back') previously in my code, and it works. The issue is that I'm trying to refresh someone's connection to a site based on someone else's connection; meaning I can't use the response information like I normally could.
I've tried looking for ways to refresh pages from outside functions but I can't find anything.
(I realize that there are easier ways to make a chat site that don't include weirdly sending data back and forth between two server's)
You can use a package called socket.io. Socket.io allows you to send requests to a client once the server has some data.
Server:
// Define express
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Create the server
const http = require('http');
const server = http.createServer(app);
// Define socket.io
const io = require('socket.io')(server);
// Define the port for the server to listen on
let port = 3000;
function logMessage(message, id) {
...
io.emit('message_sent_' + id, { message }); // Emit that a message was sent to the clients
}
function recieveMessages(id) {
// Get the messages somehow
}
app.post('/messageReciever', (req, res) => {
// req.body.message is your message and req.cookies.id is the clients random ID
logMessage(req.body.message, req.cookies.id);
});
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.cookie('id', 'some-generated-id'); // Set a cookie for the unique ID to fetch user messages
res.render('index', { data: retrieveMessages() });
});
// Get the server listening to incoming requests
server.listen(port, () => console.log('my app is online');
Client:
<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
...
</body>
<script src="/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>
<script>
const socket = io.connect();
socket.on('message_sent_' + 'some-id', function(data) {
// Do something with the data
});
</script>
</html>
References: