Difference between socket and websocket

Question

I m building web app that needs to communicate with another application using socket connections  This is new territory for me  so want to be sure that sockets are different than websockets   It seems like they re only conceptually similar     Asking because initially I d planned on using Django as the foundation for my project  but in the SO post I linked to above it s made very clear that websockets aren t possible  or at least not reliable  even with something like django-websockets  using the preferred Django setup  Apache with mod wsgi    Yet I ve found other posts that casually import Python s socket module for something as simple as grabbing the server s hostname   So     Are they really different  Is there any reason not to use Django for a project that relies on establishing socket connections with an outside server

User · Answer

Websockets use sockets in their implementation. Websockets are based on a standard protocol (now in final call, but not yet final) that defines a connection "handshake" and message "frame." The two sides go through the handshake procedure to mutually accept a connection and then use the standard message format ("frame") to pass messages back and forth.

I'm developing a framework that will allow you to communicate directly machine to machine with installed software. It might suit your purpose. You can follow my blog if you wish: http://highlevellogic.blogspot.com/2011/09/websocket-server-demonstration_26.html

User · Answer

You d have to use WebSockets  or some similar protocol module e g  as supported by the Flash plugin  because a normal browser application simply can t open a pure TCP socket   The Socket IO module available for node js can help a lot  but note that it is not a pure WebSocket module in its own right   It s actually a more generic communications module that can run on top of various other network protocols  including WebSockets  and Flash sockets   Hence if you want to use Socket IO on the server end you must also use their client code and objects   You can t easily make raw WebSocket connections to a socket io server as you d have to emulate their message protocol

User · Answer

To answer your questions    Even though they achieve  in general  similar things  yes  they are really different  WebSockets typically run from browsers connecting to Application Server over a protocol similar to HTTP that runs over TCP IP  So they are primarily for Web Applications that require a permanent connection to its server  On the other hand  plain sockets are more powerful and generic  They run over TCP IP but they are not restricted to browsers or HTTP protocol  They could be used to implement any kind of communication  No  There is no reason

User · Answer

WebSocket is just another application level protocol over TCP protocol  just like HTTP   Some snippets  lt  Spring in Action 4  quoted below  hope it can help you understand WebSocket better      In its simplest form  a WebSocket is just a communication channel   between two applications  not necessarily a browser is   involved    WebSocket communication can be used between any kinds of   applications  but the most common use of WebSocket is to facilitate   communication between a server application and a browser-based application

User · Answer

Regarding your question  b   be aware that the Websocket specification hasn t been finalised  According to the W3C      Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable    Personally I regard Websockets to be waaay too bleeding edge to use at present  Though I ll probably find them useful in a year or so

[sockets] Difference between socket and websocket?

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