Starscream is a conforming WebSocket (RFC 6455) client library in Swift for iOS and OSX.
It's Objective-C counter part can be found here: Jetfire
- Conforms to all of the base Autobahn test suite.
- Nonblocking. Everything happens in the background, thanks to GCD.
- Simple delegate pattern design.
- TLS/WSS support.
- Simple concise codebase at just a few hundred LOC.
First thing is to import the framework. See the Installation instructions, on how to add the framework to your project.
import StarscreamOnce imported, you can open a connection to your websocket server. Note that socket is probably best as a property, so your delegate can stick around.
var socket = Websocket(url: NSURL(scheme: "ws", host: "localhost:8080", path: "/"))
socket.delegate = self
socket.connect()After you are connected, we some delegate methods we need to implement.
websocketDidConnect is called as soon as the client connects to the server.
func websocketDidConnect() {
println("websocket is connected")
}websocketDidDisconnect is called as soon as the client is disconnected from the server.
func websocketDidDisconnect(error: NSError?) {
println("websocket is disconnected: \(error!.localizedDescription)")
}websocketDidWriteError is called when the client gets an error on websocket connection.
func websocketDidWriteError(error: NSError?) {
println("wez got an error from the websocket: \(error!.localizedDescription)")
}websocketDidReceiveMessage is called when the client gets a text frame from the connection.
func websocketDidReceiveMessage(text: String) {
println("got some text: \(text)")
}websocketDidReceiveData is called when the client gets a binary frame from the connection.
func websocketDidReceiveData(data: NSData) {
println("got some data: \(data.length)")
}The delegate methods give you a simple way to handle data from the server, but how do you send data?
The writeData method gives you a simple way to send NSData (binary) data to the server.
self.socket.writeData(data) //write some NSData over the socket!The writeString method is the same as writeData, but sends text/string.
self.socket.writeString("Hi Server!") //example on how to write text over the socket!The disconnect method does what you would expect and closes the socket.
self.socket.disconnect()Returns if the socket is connected or not.
if self.socket.isConnected {
// do cool stuff.
}You can also override the default websocket headers with your own custom ones like so:
socket.headers["Sec-WebSocket-Protocol"] = "someother protocols"
socket.headers["Sec-WebSocket-Version"] = "14"
socket.headers["My-Awesome-Header"] = "Everything is Awesome!"If you need to specify a protocol, simple add it to the init:
//chat and superchat are the example protocols here
var socket = Websocket(url: NSURL(scheme: "ws", host: "localhost:8080", path: "/"), protocols: ["chat","superchat"])
socket.delegate = self
socket.connect()Check out the SimpleTest project in the examples directory to see how to setup a simple connection to a websocket server.
Starscream requires at least iOS 7/OSX 10.10 or above.
Add the starscream.xcodeproj to your Xcode project. Once that is complete, in your "Build Phases" add the starscream.framework to your "Link Binary with Libraries" phase.
- Complete Docs
- Add Unit Tests
- Add Swallow Installation Docs
Starscream is licensed under the Apache v2 License.