wsproxy

Introduction

This is a WebSocket to TCP proxy for text-based protocols. WebSocket is a new technology for the communication between client-side JavaScript applications and backend servers. Since you cannot use JavaScript to connect to arbitrary TCP sockets directly, this proxy allows you to do so.

This only works for text-based protocols. Every WebSocket message is sent to the TCP server as a text line (a newline is appended automatically), and each text line from the server (delimited by a newline) is sent to the JavaScript application as one WebSocket message.

Prerequisites

wsproxy uses boost::asio and websocketpp. The latter is automatically downloaded during the build process (using CMake's ExternalProject facilities).

Building from source

The build system in use is CMake. After downloading the source code, navigate to the source directory and run

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Packaging

The project has been configured to use CPack to build a Debian package (Jessie and above). Sorry, no other packages at this time. To build the package, run make package inside the build directory.

Running

Run wsproxy --helpto get the help output:

Allowed options:
  -h [ --help ]                         Show help message
  -t [ --target-host ] arg (=127.0.0.1) Target host
  -p [ --target-port ] arg (=4303)      Target port
  -w [ --websocket-port ] arg (=9002)   WebSocket port
  --pidfile arg                         PID file
  --daemon                              Daemonize

Installing as a system service

There is an example init.d run script for Debian Jessie in etc/init.d. To install it, navigate to the source directory and run:

sudo cp etc/init.d/wsproxy /etc/init.d
update-rc.d wsproxy defaults

License

2-clause "simplified" BSD. See LICENSE file for details.

Known issues

• Most of wsproxy runs in an asynchronuous fashion and should be performing pretty well, with one exception: Opening a new connection blocks the entire application until the connection is established or fails.
• If connecting to the TCP backend fails, the WebSocket is not closed.
• This application has not been tested for security holes. Do not use on a public server! All of this comes without warranty. See LICENSE file for details.