Support web sockets

[gsogol]

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Tell us about your request
Ability for the automatic load balancer to support web sockets

Describe alternatives you've considered
Using Beanstalk and enabling web sockets support in application load balancer

[gsogol]

Just curious if there's an update. It's been over 16 months. Close to 200 people votes on this.

[nebbles]

Similarly, very keen to see even a brief word about where this is being prioritised from AWS team (@amitgupta85 please forgive the tag). Just to note (very selfishly), this is the one outstanding piece of functionality that prevents my team from migrating from Heroku, since our application uses websockets for GraphQL.

The top seven upvoted issues in this repo are all extremely desirable in my view, but this is the only one that outright blocks us from even experimenting with App Runner for our main app.

Top 7

[bnicholl]

Is there any update to this? My team wants to use App Runner for our streamlit applications, and this is a huge blocker for us

[gsogol]

I opened a support case, got the "No plans to support this". Isn't the idea to prioritize based on likes? You would think so but the team seems to be operating using their own prioritization and not Community.

[bnicholl]

Yea this seems like something a lot of people would need. Unfortunate they're not people their customers needs first.

[amitgupta85]

@gsogol @bnicholl @nebbles
We don't have native support for web sockets at this point. However, it is possible to place CloudFront and API Gateway in front of an App Runner service which has support for Web sockets.

For CloudFront, you can put a CloudFront distribution in front of a public App Runner service. For API Gateway, you have couple options

1. API Gateway in front of public App Runner service - You can use API Gateway HTTP proxy integration feature and put App Runner service behind an API Gateway. The traffic will flow from API Gateway -> public App Runner service.
   https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/api-gateway-create-api-as-simple-proxy-for-http.html

2. API Gateway in front of private App Runner service - Make the App Runner service private (accessible within a VPC) and use API Gateway VPCLink with HTTP proxy integration feature to put private App Runner service behind an API gateway. For VPCLink, you will have to set a NLB with targets as IP address of PrivateLink VPC endpoint. The traffic will flow from API Gateway -> NLB -> VPC endpoint -> private App Runner service. You can share the same API Gateway, NLB and VPC endpoint to access multiple private App Runner services so the cost of non App Runner infrastructure components (API Gateway, NLB and VPC endpoint) is shared as well as it is their one time setup and does not need to be repeated with every App Runner service - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/getting-started-with-private-integration.html

[haversnail]

For CloudFront, you can put a CloudFront distribution in front of a public App Runner service.

IIRC I did this very thing for Server-Sent Events, but to no avail. While yes, CloudFront does support WebSockets, the fact that the Envoy proxy used by AppRunner limits requests to 30 seconds means that this point is moot.

+1 to the AWS team prioritizing this.

[wordiodev]

I guess the App Runner team is very short-handed, making me worried in thinking to host my application with it.

[henricook]

Updates here would be much appreciated AWS team. I've just finished moving all my apps to app runner, spun up a test environment and only now realise there's no web socket support. I moved from a more complex (to manage) ALB/EC2 setup that supported it, so I expected it to be supported here.

Basically, I now have to move off App Runner to something else after spending hours/days moving my apps here - it's super infuriating.

[henricook]

@amitgupta85 All my hopes are on your post to save lots of wasted work. I've put a Cloudfront distribution in front of my public app runner service URL - but my app still seems to be getting a 403 when trying to open a wss:// connection - have I missed something?

[amitgupta85]

We are taking a look at the CloudFront issue and will post updates soon. In the meantime, you can also try out the API Gateway option by following putting API Gateway in front of App Runner (as discussed above) and enabling web sockets on API Gateway - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/apigateway-websocket-api-integration-requests.html

[gsogol]

@amitgupta85 or you can prioritize web sockets in AppRunner and call it a day. Community over internal priorities should always take precedence 🤔