While there is still lots to do, I am happy with the way the latest version (0.4) is progressing and very excited about the new support for Node Streams.
As you mention, SocketStream is indeed under active development, but most of that is currently going on in this experimental repo (https://github.com/socketstream/socketstream-0.4) and offline.
I hope to get a stable 0.4 release out early next year, along with full documentation, tutorials and more. Stay tuned!
It doesn't do much yet, but shows the direction I'm going in: More API based, pipeable Node Streams wherever possible, full npm / Node compatibility. Follow @socketstream for updates.
Also I want to congratulate the Meteor team on their release. Making scalable, reliable realtime web apps is hard and all work in this area benefits the entire community.
As the creator of SocketStream, I am very keen to know how this error occurred. I believe it relates to the ulimit issue Paul mentioned in another comment which was fixed some time ago (i.e. the file was there, but the user was out of file descriptors)... not sure yet. Either way, we need to catch the exception properly.
As a general tip to all those hosting a Node app in production, you can catch uncaught exceptions with:
This ensures anything which goes wrong unexpectedly will be logged to your console, rather than sent to the browser - not good!
SocketStream doesn't currently do this for you by default, but maybe it should (in production mode). It's something I will consider implementing in the near future.
So far my focus has been on creating a great dev environment. It's very encouraging to see Dashku stand up to thousands of simultaneous users (once the ulimit issue was fixed), but I'm the first to admit more work is needed to ensure SocketStream is rock solid in production. It will take time but, thanks in part to experiences like today's, we'll get there.
Hi simplify. I'll be releasing an new version of SocketStream this Sunday which allows developers to do just that.
The new Request Responder API will allow developers to experiment with many different approaches to models, model synching (e.g. with Backbone.js and Ember.js) and reactive templating.
Rather than put opinionated choices about models and clients-side frameworks into the core, we'll ensure the best third-party modules are fully documented and supported before featuring them on our website.
Big thanks to the excellent Skills Matter for hosting this meetup and getting the video out so quickly. We've been overwhelmed by the interest in SocketStream and the number of people who've already started experimenting with real-time games, wikis, and more.
Unfortunately the video cuts off at a crucial point: The last slides talks about how we want to do testing and scaling differently, and in particular how SocketStream is still highly experimental and subject to a lot of change in the future as we learn more and refine our ideas.
After playing back the video I also want to clarify the reference to Gmail I made at the beginning. We have shown an early version of SocketStream and the websocket concept to an ex-Googler now at AOL who's been involved in many projects at Google, including Gmail.
He loves the idea and mentioned he would let the Gmail team know about it as the '100% websocket approach' potentially solves many of the problems they had wrestling with AJAX and long polling. We would certainly welcome their thoughts and contributions, along with everyone else's. We have some big problems to solve in this space and are the first to recognise we can't do it all alone.
So please go forth, have fun, and see what you can create. We are already hard at work on the next version which will include support for the new features in Socket.IO 0.7, plus a website for SocketStream containing full documentation and an 'live' API guide. Please follow @socketstream for other exciting developments coming soon.
While there is still lots to do, I am happy with the way the latest version (0.4) is progressing and very excited about the new support for Node Streams.
As you mention, SocketStream is indeed under active development, but most of that is currently going on in this experimental repo (https://github.com/socketstream/socketstream-0.4) and offline.
I hope to get a stable 0.4 release out early next year, along with full documentation, tutorials and more. Stay tuned!
Owen