单页Web应用程序是否应该与服务器保持一个Web Socket连接？

Question

I'm working on a single page Backbone application that is going to use web sockets. The application is fairly complex, with 6 or more major areas (screens).

The syntax of web sockets seems straightforward enough and I'm wondering now about the architecture.

When using web sockets, is it most performant to take the first approach or the 2nd approach?

1 : Open a single websocket for all live server communication, on any screen or area of the application, and then filter those messages on the client side?

or...

2 : Open multiple websockets at a time, where each web socket represents some area of functionality in the application

(I've seen this page, but it's about the server side and I'm interested in the client side: What is the best practice for WebSocket server(s)? )

Update: server is using Jetty (a Java technology not unlike Tomcat).

Answer 1

I would open only one connection, easier to manage. To ease debugging you could namespace all your events with the area name. Also socket.io supports namespaces, see section "Restricting yourself to a namespace" here http://socket.io/#how-to-use .

Also if your doing lot of communications with your websocket you can turn it off with the Visibility API, example here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/Using_the_Page_Visibility_API

Answer 2

Not a direct answer to your question but, since you say you're using backbone on the client, and assuming you're using node on the server (if not, this may be a compelling argument for doing so), you may be interested in this article which discusses in some detail the sharing of model data between client and (node) server to synchronise state. Backbone, in case you weren't aware, can be installed as a module in node.

Since your application is, as you describe, fairly complex, it seems likely that you will benefit from the ability to share the same complex model directly between client and server.