Using ws to create a WebSocket server

The WebSocket protocol enables two-way communication between a browser and a server. WebSockets are commonly leveraged for building real-time web applications, such as instant messaging clients.

In this recipe, we're going to use the third-party ws module to create a WebSocket server that we can interact with via our browser.

Getting ready

1. Start by creating a directory named websocket-server containing two files—one named client.js and another named server.js:

   $ mkdir websocket-server
   $ cd websocket-server
   $ touch client.js
   $ touch server.js

2. Also, for our client, let's create a public directory containing a file named index.html:

   $ mkdir public
   $ touch public/index.html

3. As we will be using a third-party npm module, we also need to initialize our project:

   $ npm init --yes

How to do it…

In this recipe, we're going to create a WebSocket server and a client and send messages between the two...