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This is complicated, and not necessarily one question. I'd appreciate any possible help.

I've read that is is possible to have websockets without server access, but I cannot seem to find any examples that show how it is. I've come to that conclusion (that I believe I need this) based on the following two things:

  1. I've been struggling for the past several hours trying to figure out how to even get websockets to work with the WAMP server I have on my machine, which I have root access. Installed composer, but cannot figure out how to install the composer.phar file to install ratchet. Have tried other PHP websocket implementations (would prefer that it be in PHP), but still cannot get them to work.

  2. My current webhost I'm using to test things out on is a free host, and doesn't allow SSH access. So, even if I could figure out to get websockets with root access, it is a moot point when it comes to the host.

I've also found free VPS hosts by googling (of course, limited everything) but has full root access, but I'd prefer to keep something that allows more bandwidth (my free host is currently unlimited). And I've read that you can (and should) host the websocket server on a different subdomain than the HTTP server, and that it can even be run on a different domain entirely.

It also might eventually be cheaper to host my own site, of course have no real clue on that, but in that case I'd need to figure out how to even get websockets working on my machine.

So, if anyone can understand what I'm asking, several questions here, is it possible to use websockets without root access, and if so, how? How do I properly install ratchet websockets when I cannot figure out the composer.phar file (I have composer.json with the ratchet code in it but not sure if it's in the right directory), and this question is if the first question is not truly possible. Is it then possible to have websocket server on a VPS and have the HTTP server on an entirely different domain and if so, is there any documentation anywhere about it?

I mean, of course, there is an option of using AJAX and forcing the browser to reload a JS file every period of time that would use jQuery ajax to update a series of divs regardless of whether anything has been changed, but that could get complicated, and I'm not even sure if that is possible (I don't see why it wouldn't be), but then again I'd prefer websockets over that since I hear they are much less resource hungry than some sort of this paragraph would be.

Witold Kowelski
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    As far as I understand it, there are 2 sides to the websocket picture. Server (php) and client (browser javascript). If you can run php on your server, you should be able to have your server use [ratchet](http://socketo.me) and provide a websocket service, the client side can use something like socket.io – Loopo Feb 03 '16 at 23:15
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    Use [heroku](http://heroku.com) for socket.io It has pretty awesome command line to access almost what you need, I've hosted my Socket project there and it works like a charm, Let me know if heroku helps. Give it a try! It is free and perhaps you can rely on its CLI. – Talha Habib Feb 06 '16 at 18:07
  • Could something like https://pusher.com/ help you? – jornare Feb 10 '16 at 11:04

2 Answers2

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A plain PHP file running under vanilla LAMP (i.e. mod_php under Apache) cannot handle WebSocket connections. It wouldn't be able to perform the protocol upgrade, let alone actually perform real-time communication, at least through Apache. In theory, you could have a very-long-running web request to a PHP file which runs a TCP server to serve WebSocket requests, but this is impractical and I doubt a shared host will actually allow PHP to do that.

There may be some shared hosts that make it possible WebSocket hosting with PHP, but they can't offer that without either SSH/shell access, or some other way to run PHP outside the web server. If they're just giving you a directory to upload PHP files to, and serving them with Apache, you're out of luck.

As for your trouble with Composer, I don't know if it's possible to run composer.phar on a shared host without some kind of shell access. Some hosts (e.g. Heroku) have specific support for Composer.

Regarding running a WebSocket server on an entirely different domain, you can indeed do that. Just point your JavaScript to connect to that domain, and make sure that the WebSocket server provides the necessary Cross-Origin Resource Sharing headers.

Andrea
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OK... you have a few questions, so I will try to answer them one by one.

1. What to use

You could use Socket.IO. Its a library for developing realtime web application based on JavaScript. It consists of 2 parts - client side (runs on the visitor browser) and server side. Basic usage does not require almost any background knowledge on Node.js. Here is an example tutorial for a simple chat app on the official Socket.IO website.

2. Hosting

Most of the hosting providers have control panel (cPanel) with the capebility to install/activate different Apache plugins and so on. First you should check if Node.js isn't available already, if not you could contact support and ask them if including this would be an option.

If you don't have any luck with your current hosting provider you could always switch hosts quickly as there are a lot of good deals out there. Google will definitely help you here. Here is a list containing a few of the (maybe) best options. Keep in mind that although some hosting deals may be paid there are a lot of low cost options to choose from.

3. Bandwidth

As you are worried about "resource hungry" code maybe you can try hosting some of your content on Amazon CloudFront. It's a content delivery network that is widely used and guarantees quick connection and fast resource loading as the files are loaded from the closest to the client server. The best part is that you only pay for what you actually use, so if you don't have that much traffic it would be really cheap to run and still reliable!

Hope this helps ;)

Виктор Иванов
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