Emitting a private message to another socket
Sometimes, you need to send a private message to just one other socket and not every socket that may be listening in. As the server side is in charge of managing all the connected sockets, we can specify the sockets that our events are emitted to granularly.
In this recipe, we will use this ability to create a simple app. Here, the user can specify which user to give a hug to. Only the giver and receiver will be aware that the hug was initiated. Our application will look something similar to the following screenshot:
Getting ready
For this recipe, we will use jQuery for the DOM manipulation and Bootstrap for styling purposes.
How to do it…
To send private messages using Socket.IO, follow these steps:
Add the relevant events to your server. These will be in charge of managing a list of connected users and emitting private messages to users (as required). In addition to the typical Socket.IO server-side setup, you will require the following code:
// We...
