portal entry

<p>[deleting my duplicated comment] </p>

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Steve, I can't say I know the answer for sure, but I think I've found it by a: searching for the term: websockets "channels" and b: reading mention of "channels" in the CF docs and resources. Taking the latter first, the primary non-doc resource on CF websockets is <a href="https://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/html5-websockets-coldfusion-pt1.html." rel="nofollow">this Adobe article which introduced them with cf10</a>.  And in it, Awdhesh describes how CF's ws implementation has two modes (see "WebSocket communication modes"). The first is broadcast mode, which uses channels. The second is p2p (point to point) mode, which does not. The former is for a given websocket to communicate with multiple clients at once. The latter is for one-to-one communication. While <a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/cfml-reference/coldfusion-tags/tags-u-z/cfwebsocket.html" rel="nofollow">the doc page for cfwebsocket itself</a> doesn't mention these modes as any sort of attribute, at the bottom of the page it points to the <a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/developing-applications/coldfusion-and-html-5/using-coldfusion-websocket.html" rel="nofollow">Developer Guide chapter on websockets</a>, and that has sections on <a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/developing-applications/coldfusion-and-html-5/using-coldfusion-websocket/using-websocket-in-point-to-point-communication.html" rel="nofollow">p2p</a> and <a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/developing-applications/coldfusion-and-html-5/using-coldfusion-websocket/using-websocket-to-broadcast-messages.html" rel="nofollow">broadcast</a> modes showing it's simply a matter of whether one uses channels (as defined in application.cfc typically) or not. So note first that use of channels is optional in CF. Second, I find many results on the web indicating that the concept of channels in websockets is not unique to CF, but supported by many other websocket solutions. And the references to channels seem to be referring to it as multi-plexing (or "mux"). And it seems it may well be based on an "extension" for websockets originally proposed several years ago (<a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-hybi-websocket-multiplexing-11" rel="nofollow">https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-hybi-websocket-multiplexing-11)</a>, which is implemented in clients using a special header that servers know how to interpret. As such, when you read about various resources, note they may be older and from before that extension was implemented. Or some clients may still not yet have implemented it. I can't say I have any experience to indicate whether this is a feature you should or should not expect to work with different clients. I will say that the last section in the Dev Guide chapter on websockets offers <a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/developing-applications/coldfusion-and-html-5/using-coldfusion-websocket/browser-support-for-websocket.html" rel="nofollow">browser version support info</a>. I think that's more about which support html5 (on which websockets was based) rather than on which may support mux/channels. Hopefully someone with more specific experience can chime in, or with this new info you may be able to dig around to get still more clarity on the point.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

I have been trying to post an answer here, but for some reason I don't see it offered. And if I try to post it again, it says it's a duplicate. It had a few links in it, so perhaps it's awaiting moderation. I will ask Adobe.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Steve, just so I understand  correctly. You are wanting to communicate to ColdFusion's WebSocket server from your third part device. Can you specify what device and how you configure the WebSocket connection? If it is trying to just use the WebSocket API directly, you will need to be able to do some extra coding to make it communicate with ColdFusion's WS Server. I have several examples that you can review on my GitHub, but I believe this one might be able to help you best if the scenario above is what you are trying to accomplish. <a href="https://github.com/GiancarloGomez/ColdFusion-Realtime-With-WebSockets-Demo-Code/tree/master/html-to-coldfusion" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/GiancarloGomez/ColdFusion-Realtime-With-WebSockets-Demo-Code/tree/master/html-to-coldfusion</a>    

Comment by Giancarlo Gomez

Steve, how did things resolve? Did any of the below help?

Comment by Charlie Arehart