Binary support

[benbro]

WebSocket support sending and receiving binary data.
Is it possible that web-socket-js will handle this transparently for the user?
In case of a binary message, it will base64 encode it, will call send_binary to so the flash socket will decode it and send it as binary.
The flash socket will do the same in the opposite direction. When it will receive a binary packet, it will base64 encode it and call onbinarymessage on js.
the binaryType attribute will tell the js to use a blob or array buffer for the binary message.

Makes sense?

Thanks

[gimite]

We had a discussion about it, and we decided not to add binary support for web-socket-js: #89

In short:

• We anyway need ArrayBuffer or Blob to implement binary API, but there are not so many browsers which have ArrayBuffer or Blob but don't have native WebSocket.
• There are browsers which have native WebSocket but without binary support. web-socket-js uses native WebSocket when available. So binary API is still not available for those browsers.

[benbro]

I agree that web-socket.js should be compatible with native WebSocket without adding custom syntax.
It's possible to use a polyfill to add array buffer and blob support to older browsers.

Typed arrays
https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/blob/master/web/compatibility.js#L21
Array Buffer
http://www.calormen.com/polyfill/typedarray.js
Blob
https://github.com/eligrey/BlobBuilder.js

I'm using the first link from pdf.js successfully.
Haven't tried the second and third links but they look good.

This could be very useful for projects such as noVNC.

[gimite]

Yeah, it should workaround the first issue, but the second issue remains.

[benbro]

Issue 2 is the fault of browsers that implemented unstable versions of the spec with unprefixed object.
web-socket.js doesn't make anything worse for these browsers but improve it for other browsers.