The 'hyco-ws' Package for Azure Relay Hybrid Connections

Overview

This Node package for Azure Relay Hybrid Connections is built on and extends the 'ws' NPM package. This package re-exports all exports of that base package and adds new exports that enable integration with the Azure Relay service's Hybrid Connections feature.

Existing applications that require('ws') can use this package instead with require('hyco-ws') , which also enables hybrid scenarios where an application can listen for WebSocket connections locally from "inside the firewall" and via Relay Hybrid Connections all at the same time.

Documentation

The API is generally documented in the main 'ws' package and this document describes how this package differs from that baseline.

The key differences between the base package and this 'hyco-ws' is that it adds a new server class, that is exported via require('hyco-ws').RelayedServer, and a few helper methods.

Package Helper methods

There are several utility methods available on the package export that can be referenced like this:

const WebSocket = require('hyco-ws');

var listenUri = WebSocket.createRelayListenUri('namespace.servicebus.windows.net', 'path');
listenUri = WebSocket.appendRelayToken(listenUri, 'ruleName', '...key...')
...

The helper methods are for use with this package, but might be also be used by a Node server for enabling web or device clients to create listeners or senders by handing them URIs that already embed short-lived tokens and that can be used with common WebSocket stacks that do not support setting HTTP headers for the WebSocket handshake. Embedding authorization tokens into the URI is primarily supported for those library-external usage scenarios.

createRelayListenUri

var uri = createRelayListenUri([namespaceName], [path], [[token]], [[id]])

Creates a valid Azure Relay Hybrid Connection listener URI for the given namespace and path. This URI can then be used with the relayed version of the WebSocketServer class.

• namespaceName (required) - the domain-qualified name of the Azure Relay namespace to use
• path (required) - the name of an existing Azure Relay Hybrid Connection in that namespace
• token (optional) - a previously issued Relay access token that shall be embedded in the listener URI (see below)
• id (optional) - a tracking identifier that allows end-to-end diagnostics tracking of requests

The token value is optional and should only be used when it is not possible to send HTTP headers along with the WebSocket handshake as it is the case with the W3C WebSocket stack.

createRelaySendUri

var uri = createRelaySendUri([namespaceName], [path], [[token]], [[id]])

Creates a valid Azure Relay Hybrid Connection send URI for the given namespace and path. This URI can be used with any WebSocket client.

• namespaceName (required) - the domain-qualified name of the Azure Relay namespace to use
• path (required) - the name of an existing Azure Relay Hybrid Connection in that namespace
• token (optional) - a previously issued Relay access token that shall be embedded in the send URI (see below)
• id (optional) - a tracking identifier that allows end-to-end diagnostics tracking of requests

The token value is optional and should only be used when it is not possible to send HTTP headers along with the WebSocket handshake as it is the case with the W3C WebSocket stack.

createRelayToken

var token = createRelayToken([uri], [ruleName], [key], [[expirationSeconds]])

Creates an Azure Relay Shared Access Signature (SAS) token for the given target URI, SAS rule, and SAS rule key that is valid for the given number of seconds or for an hour from the current instant if the expiry argunent is omitted.

• uri (required) - the URI for which the token is to be issued. The URI will be normalized to using the http scheme and query string information will be stripped.
• ruleName (required) - SAS rule name either for the entity represented by the given URI or for the namespace represented by teh URI host-portion.
• key (required) - valid key for the SAS rule.
• expirationSeconds (optional) - the number of seconds until the generated token should expire. The default is 1 hour (3600) if not specified.

The issued token will confer the rights associated with the chosen SAS rule for the chosen duration.

appendRelayToken

var uri = appendRelayToken([uri], [ruleName], [key], [[expirationSeconds]])

This method is functionally equivalent to the createRelayToken method above, but returns the token correctly appended to the input URI.

Class ws.RelayedServer

The hycows.RelayedServer class is an alternative to the ws.Server class that does not listen on the local network, but delegates listening to the Azure Relay.

The two classes are largely contract compatible, meaning that an existing application using the ws.Server class can be changed to use the relayed version quite easily. The main differences in the constructor and the available options.

Constructor

var ws = require('hyco-ws');
var server = ws.RelayedServer;

var wss = new server(
    {
        server : ws.createRelayListenUri(ns, path),
        token: function() { return ws.createRelayToken('http://' + ns, keyrule, key); }
    });

The RelayedServer constructor supports a different set of arguments than the Server since it is neither a standalone listener nor embeddable into an existing HTTP listener framework. There are also fewer options available since the WebSocket management is largely delegated to the Relay service.

Constructor arguments:

• server (required) - the fully qualified URI for a Hybrid Connection name on which to listen, usually constructed with the WebSocket.createRelayListenUri() helper.
• token (required) - this argument either holds a previously issued token string or a callback function that can be called to obtain such a token string. The callback option is preferred as it allows token renewal.

Events

RelayedServer instances emit three Events that allow you to handle incoming requests, establish connections, and detect error conditions. You must subscribe to the 'connect' event to handle messages.

headers

function(headers)

The 'headers' event is raised just before an incoming connection is accepted, allowing for modification of the headers to send to the client.

connection

function(socket)

Emitted whenever a new WebSocket connection is accepted. The object is of type ws.WebSocket just as with the base package.

error

function(error)

If the underlying server emits an error, it will be forwarded here.

Helpers

To simplify starting a relayed server and immediately subscribing to incoming connections, the package exposes a simple helper function, which is also used in the samples:

createRelayedListener

    var WebSocket = require('hyco-ws');

    var wss = WebSocket.createRelayedServer(
        {
            server : WebSocket.createRelayListenUri(ns, path),
            token: function() { return WebSocket.createRelayToken('http://' + ns, keyrule, key); }
        }, 
        function (ws) {
            console.log('connection accepted');
            ws.onmessage = function (event) {
                console.log(JSON.parse(event.data));
            };
            ws.on('close', function () {
                console.log('connection closed');
            });       
    });

var server = createRelayedServer([options], [connectCallback] )

This method is simple syntactic sugar that calls the constructor to create a new instance of the RelayedServer and then subscribes the provided callback to the 'connection' event.

relayedConnect

Simply mirroring the createRelayedServer helper in function, relayedConnect creates a client connection and subscribes to the 'open' event on the resulting socket.

    var uri = WebSocket.createRelaySendUri(ns, path);
    WebSocket.relayedConnect(
        uri,
        WebSocket.createRelayToken(uri, keyrule, key),
        function (socket) {
            ...
        }
    );