socket.io-client object is not a function

Question

I opened a question here earlier ( Socket.io trigger events between two node.js apps? ), this was much help, but I am confused out of my mind.

I keep getting object is not a function on my client side script.

A little setup, I have a front end site that is served with express localhost:9200 then I have a back end app localhost:3100 that is also served with express and I am trying to emit events from localhost:9200 to the socket.io server localhost:3100

Client script for website localhost:9200

// I have tried many different ways
var socket = io('http://localhost:3100');
var socket = io('http://localhost');
var socket = io();

EDIT

The issue was with the above of course, because io in the above case for some reason was an object when it should be a function, I came across an old post which mentioned using var socket = io.connect('http://localhost:3100'); connect and that worked, I though it was depreciated or something, I have no clue why the docs don't mention this but it fixed my issue.

All result in object is not a function. I include the client side script like this

// tried some different ways
<script src="http://localhost:3100/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>
<script src="socket.io/socket.io.js"></script> // this is a 404

I have installed https://github.com/automattic/socket.io-client and on the server for the front end website :9200 I have set it up like.

// tried a couple ways to connect
var socket = require('socket.io-client')('http://localhost:3100');
var socket = require('socket.io-client')('http://localhost');
  socket.on('connect', function(){});
  socket.on('event', function(data){});
  socket.on('disconnect', function(){});

I am confused on how to properly configure this so that I can get my site to emit socket events to my server and visa versa?

Answer 1

Well I figured it out, this is pretty ridiculous but on the client side javascript I needed to add var socket = io.connect('http://localhost:3100'); the io.connect made it work versus var socket = io('http://localhost:3100');

Maybe I missed it but the docs don't say to use io.connect https://github.com/automattic/socket.io-client whatever it works and I am happy, any thoughts on why the docs don't mention this would be great.

Answer 2

The difference is io.connect is pre 1.0 syntax. They changed it for whatever reason. These are the exact kind of fun surprises I have come to expect in socket.io.