If you run libwebsockets-test-server and point your browser (eg, Chrome) to
It will fetch a script in the form of test.html, and then run the script in there on the browser to open a websocket connection. Incrementing numbers should appear in the browser display.
By default the test server logs to both stderr and syslog, you can control what is logged using -d <log level>, see later.
You can use the -D option on the test server to have it fork into the background and return immediately. In this daemonized mode all stderr is disabled and logging goes only to syslog, eg, /var/log/messages or similar.
The server maintains a lockfile at /tmp/.lwsts-lock that contains the pid of the master process, and deletes this file when the master process terminates.
To stop the daemon, do
$ kill `cat /tmp/.lwsts-lock`
If it finds a stale lock (the pid mentioned in the file does not exist any more) it will delete the lock and create a new one during startup.
If the lock is valid, the daemon will exit with a note on stderr that it was already running.
To test it using SSL/WSS, just run the test server with
$ libwebsockets-test-server --ssl
and use the URL
The connection will be entirely encrypted using some generated certificates that your browser will not accept, since they are not signed by any real Certificate Authority. Just accept the certificates in the browser and the connection will proceed in first https and then websocket wss, acting exactly the same.
test-server.c is all that is needed to use libwebsockets for serving both the script html over http and websockets.
If you run the test server as described above, you can also connect to it using the test client as well as a browser.
$ libwebsockets-test-client localhost
will by default connect to the test server on localhost:7681 and print the dumb increment number from the server at the same time as drawing random circles in the mirror protocol; if you connect to the test server using a browser at the same time you will be able to see the circles being drawn.
You can test against echo.websockets.org as a sanity test like this (the client connects to port 80 by default):
$ libwebsockets-test-echo --client echo.websocket.org
This echo test is of limited use though because it doesn't negotiate any protocol. You can run the same test app as a local server, by default on localhost:7681
$ libwebsockets-test-echo
and do the echo test against the local echo server
$ libwebsockets-test-echo --client localhost --port 7681
If you add the --ssl switch to both the client and server, you can also test with an encrypted link.
To test SSL/WSS client action, just run the client test with
$ libwebsockets-test-client localhost --ssl
By default the client test applet is set to accept selfsigned certificates used by the test server, this is indicated by the use_ssl var being set to 2. Set it to 1 to reject any server certificate that it doesn't have a trusted CA cert for.
libwebsockets-test-ping connects as a client to a remote websocket server using 04 protocol and pings it like the normal unix ping utility.
$ libwebsockets-test-ping localhost handshake OK for protocol lws-mirror-protocol Websocket PING localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1) 64 bytes of data. 64 bytes from localhost: req=1 time=0.1ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=2 time=0.1ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=3 time=0.1ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=4 time=0.2ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=5 time=0.1ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=6 time=0.2ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=7 time=0.2ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=8 time=0.1ms ^C --- localhost.localdomain websocket ping statistics --- 8 packets transmitted, 8 received, 0% packet loss, time 7458ms rtt min/avg/max = 0.110/0.185/0.218 ms $
By default it sends 64 byte payload packets using the 04 PING packet opcode type. You can change the payload size using the -s= flag, up to a maximum of 125 mandated by the 04 standard.
Using the lws-mirror protocol that is provided by the test server, libwebsockets-test-ping can also use larger payload sizes up to 4096 is BINARY packets; lws-mirror will copy them back to the client and they appear as a PONG. Use the -m flag to select this operation.
The default interval between pings is 1s, you can use the -i= flag to set this, including fractions like -i=0.01 for 10ms interval.
Before you can even use the PING opcode that is part of the standard, you must complete a handshake with a specified protocol. By default lws-mirror-protocol is used which is supported by the test server. But if you are using it on another server, you can specify the protcol to handshake with by --protocol=protocolname
By default it runs in server mode
$ libwebsockets-test-fraggle libwebsockets test fraggle (C) Copyright 2010-2011 Andy Green <andy@warmcat.com> licensed under LGPL2.1 Compiled with SSL support, not using it Listening on port 7681 server sees client connect accepted v06 connection Spamming 360 random fragments Spamming session over, len = 371913. sum = 0x2D3C0AE Spamming 895 random fragments Spamming session over, len = 875970. sum = 0x6A74DA1 ...
You need to run a second session in client mode, you have to give the -c switch and the server address at least:
$ libwebsockets-test-fraggle -c localhost libwebsockets test fraggle (C) Copyright 2010-2011 Andy Green <andy@warmcat.com> licensed under LGPL2.1 Client mode Connecting to localhost:7681 denied deflate-stream extension handshake OK for protocol fraggle-protocol client connects to server EOM received 371913 correctly from 360 fragments EOM received 875970 correctly from 895 fragments EOM received 247140 correctly from 258 fragments EOM received 695451 correctly from 692 fragments ...
The fraggle test sends a random number up to 1024 fragmented websocket frames each of a random size between 1 and 2001 bytes in a single message, then sends a checksum and starts sending a new randomly sized and fragmented message.
The fraggle test client receives the same message fragments and computes the same checksum using websocket framing to see when the message has ended. It then accepts the server checksum message and compares that to its checksum.
The http_proxy environment variable is respected by the client connection code for both ws:// and wss://. It doesn't support authentication.
You use it like this
$ export http_proxy=myproxy.com:3128 $ libwebsockets-test-client someserver.com
By default logging of severity "notice", "warn" or "err" is enabled to stderr.
Again by default other logging is compiled in but disabled from printing.
If you want to eliminate the debug logging below notice in severity, use the --disable-debug configure option to have it removed from the code by the preprocesser.
If you want to see more detailed debug logs, you can control a bitfield to select which logs types may print using the lws_set_log_level() api, in the test apps you can use -d <number> to control this. The types of logging available are (OR together the numbers to select multiple)
The final IETF standard is supported for both client and server, protocol version 13.
Since libwebsockets runs using poll() and a single threaded approach, any unexpected latency coming from system calls would be bad news. There's now a latency tracking scheme that can be built in with --with-latency at configure-time, logging the time taken for system calls to complete and if the whole action did complete that time or was deferred.
You can see the detailed data by enabling logging level 512 (eg, -d 519 on the test server to see that and the usual logs), however even without that the "worst" latency is kept and reported to the logs with NOTICE severity when the context is destroyed.
Some care is needed interpreting them, if the action completed the first figure (in us) is the time taken for the whole action, which may have retried through the poll loop many times and will depend on network roundtrip times. High figures here don't indicate a problem. The figure in us reported after "lat" in the logging is the time taken by this particular attempt. High figures here may indicate a problem, or if you system is loaded with another app at that time, such as the browser, it may simply indicate the OS gave preferential treatment to the other app during that call.