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I have an electron application that runs with express. I would like to be able to share data between users when they are both 'online' in the local network. I have looked into different peer to peer tools such as peerjs and simple-peer but I have had difficulties with tools and I'm not certain this is the proper route to go in the first place.

What I mean by sharing is that when both users are 'online', they are able to 'sync' their data with each other. Each user has a local database nedb where they store information.

How can I enable users to share data through an express/electron application over a local network?

Matthew Moran
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  • I am not sure how much data you need to share but you could look into [Socket.io](http://socket.io) –  Feb 08 '17 at 00:28
  • How would this work exactly? Each user has their own instance of express running locally lets say on port 9000. I've messed around with socket.io using a typical client/server relationship. But the setup I'm describing is a little different. – Matthew Moran Feb 08 '17 at 00:40
  • Some thoughts: a) How big is the data? (i.e. practicality of passing the whole DB dump around); b) How often do clients connect/disconnect, and how long are they disconnected for while other peers are doing work? If "big" and "lots of updates will be needed", switching to something like CouchDB, which will handle "eventual consistency" automatically? – Darren Cook Feb 10 '17 at 10:15
  • a) the data will mostly be text but also can contain images and audio files. b) clients will connect intermittently throughout the day (syncing should be more or less manual i.e. giving users the option to sync particular data). Clients may be disconnected for any amount of time but typically will connect each day. I'm not opposed to switching to CouchDB however, I'm not sure that solves the initial connection over a local network. Even with CouchDB each user would still have a local instance of express/couchDB – Matthew Moran Feb 10 '17 at 16:02

1 Answers1

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It appears that I can achieve what I'm looking for using bonjour and socket.io. I will use bonjour to publish http services and to browse these services. I will use socket.io and socket.io-client to emit and listen for events from local clients and external servers.

Matthew Moran
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