Connect to Socket.io server from a Rails server - ruby-on-rails

Question

[update 1]
i found out that io.connect('http://xxxxx.herokuapp.com') actually send out a request on xxxxx.herokuapp.com port 3000:
the connection works if the request is WITHOUT port number. I didn't specify a port in my io.connect, How can i get rid of that?
Request URL:http://xxxxx.herokuapp.com:3000/socket.io/1/?t=1360853265439
Request Headersview source
Cache-Control:max-age=0
Origin:http://localhost:3000
Referer:http://localhost:3000/about
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8_2) AppleWebKit/537.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/24.0.1312.57 Safari/537.17
Query String Parametersview sourceview URL encoded
t:1360853265439
[update 2]
for comparison here is the HEAD of a successful connect when i run the java script from local file system
Request URL:http://xxxxx.herokuapp.com/socket.io/1/?t=1360854705943
Request Method:GET
Status Code:200 OK
Request Headersview source
Accept:*/*
Accept-Charset:ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding:gzip,deflate,sdch
Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8
Cache-Control:max-age=0
Connection:keep-alive
Host :xxxxx.herokuapp.com
Origin:null
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8_2) AppleWebKit/537.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/24.0.1312.57 Safari/537.17
[update 3]
set port to 80 seems to be working
var socket = io.connect('http://xxxxx.herokuapp.com',{port:80});
[Question] I intend to have socket.io set up on one host to talk to a Rails app on another host. It all works fine when the client side Javascript was hosted on localhost:3000 to connect to Socket.io hosted on a node.js server on localhost:5000. It works as well when both client side Javascript and Socket.io hosted on Heroku on the same port.
socket_server.js hosted on XXXX.herokuapp.com
var app = require('http').createServer(handler)
, io = require('socket.io').listen(app)
, fs = require('fs')
, i = 0
io.configure(function () {
io.set("origin = *");
io.set("transports", ["xhr-polling"]);
io.set("polling duration", 100);
});
var port = process.env.PORT || 5000; // Use the port that Heroku provides or default to 5000
app.listen(port, function() {
console.log(">>>>>>socket server up and running on port: "+port);
});
function handler (req, res) {
fs.readFile(__dirname + '/socket.html',
function (err, data) {
if (err) {
res.writeHead(500);
return res.end('Error loading socket.html');
}
res.writeHead(200);
res.end(data);
});
}
io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
console.log(">>>>>>client connected through socket");
socket.emit('news', '>>>>>>server say hello to client', i);
console.log('>>>>>>server say hello to client' +'['+i+']')
socket.on('my other event', function (data) {
socket.emit('news', i);
i++;
console.log(data +'['+i+']');
});
});
if I put client side javascript in socket.html on XXXX.herokuapp.com same as socket.io it behave as expected.
<div id='sandbox'>sandbox</div>
<script src="/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>
<script>
var socket = io.connect('window.location.hostname');
$('#sandbox').append('<div> lora </div>');
socket.on('news', function (data, index) {
$('#sandbox').append('<div>' + data + ' ' + index + '</div>');
console.log(data);
socket.emit('my other event', { my: 'data' });
});
</script>
However if I put client side Javascript on Rails server on YYYY.herokuapp.com and try to connect to Socket.io server on xxx.herokuapp.com, it doesnt work. it managed to retreive socket.io.js on the server but io.connect('http://xxxxx.herokuapp.com') doesnt not get any response from the server.
<div id='sandbox'>sandbox</div>
<script src="http://xxxxx.herokuapp.com/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>
<script>
var socket = io.connect('http://xxxxx.herokuapp.com');
$('#sandbox').append('<div> lora </div>');
socket.on('news', function (data, index) {
$('#sandbox').append('<div>' + data + ' ' + index + '</div>');
console.log(data);
socket.emit('my other event', { my: 'data' });
});
</script>
I read a few post point the solution to set io.set("origins = *") but this seems not working in this case as well.

Answer 1

Origins are set to * by default in socket.io. And it would be io.set("origin", "*"); but as this is the default value, you can just ignore this function.
I do notice that you also have var socket = io.connect('window.location.hostname') in your client side code, you problably ment: var socket = io.connect(window.location.hostname) without the single quotes. The heroku docs do recommend the use of io.set("polling duration", 100); But you set it to 100 instead of the advised 10.Other then that I don't see anything wrong with your code and it should just work.
If these fixes don't help then I would blame it on your hosting. Heroku is a really restrictive platform when it comes to deploying real-time applications. So it could be that they are messing something up here. I would suggest trying to deploy somewhere else like on nodejitsu.com which also supports WebSockets and does not impose any limits to polling to see if it works there for you.